The I'm Sorry I Lied trend, made from your childhood costume photo

How to make an I'm Sorry I Lied video yourself

You do not need this page to make one. This is how the video is put together, so you can build it with any picture model and image-to-video model you like.

1. Step 1

   Draw the perfect version from your photo

   Use a picture model that takes a reference photo, and ask for the same child at the same age and in the same pose, in a well-made version of the same costume on a Halloween porch at dusk. Describe the costume's colours and parts rather than naming it in one word, and say that only the costume, the props and the background change.

2. Step 2

   Set it moving, gently

   Give the still to an image-to-video model and ask for very little: a small wave, flickering pumpkins, a slow push-in, the child facing the camera the whole time. Six seconds is plenty. A twirl or a turn of the head makes the model draw the face again, and it comes back as someone else.

3. Step 3

   Cut the three slides together

   At 9:16, put the clip first with the setup line, then a blurred, darkened copy of its first frame with the apology in the middle, then your original photo shown whole over a blurred copy of itself so nothing is cropped. Use hard cuts and add the trend sound on TikTok when you post.

The shots, second by second

Where it goes wrong

• Change the costume, not the child

  Ask for a "perfect" version and a model will happily improve the child too: older, slimmer, taller, smoother skin. Say outright that the face, hair, height, build and age stay exactly as in the photo and that nothing is retouched. A kid who looks like someone else is not your childhood photo any more.

• Keep it a kids' costume

  Say the costume is a loose, fully covering children's costume: nothing tight, short, cropped or revealing, no heels, no grown-up styling. Toy props stay toys, so a cardboard sword becomes a better toy sword, never a real-looking weapon.

• Describe the costume, do not just name it

  Named in one word, a costume comes back as the most typical version of that word rather than yours. Say its colours and its parts, and that the perfect one is neatly finished, or the tape and cardboard edges of the real one leak into it.

• Leave the real photo alone

  Do not run the real photo through a filter, an upscaler or a picture model, and do not crop it to fill a vertical frame: an old landscape snapshot cropped to 9:16 loses half the costume. Show it whole, as it is. It is the punchline.

• Only your own childhood photo

  Use a photo of yourself as a child, or of your own child if you are their parent or guardian. Not another family's child, not celebrities, not anyone who has not agreed to be in it. Children cannot say yes for themselves, and platforms take these down.

• Label it as AI-generated

  Switch on TikTok's AI-generated content label before you post. The first slide is made by AI, the trend is about owning up to that, and viewers trust a post that says so.