Following ChatGPT’s unveiling by OpenAI, the podcast How to Kill an Hour revisited how the tool’s name sounds to French speakers. Host Marcus Bonzy said that in French, ChatGPT sounds exactly like “cat, I farted” — “Chatte, j’ai pété!” — and joked about people on TV and in the news saying it with a straight face. Commenters noted other languages have similar quirks, including a Facebook user who said “Chatte” is a term of endearment meaning “female cat,” so it means “My dear, I farted.” Another commenter cited the Toyota MR2 sounding like “merde,” meaning “turd,” and a Facebooker said that when they worked for GPT 40 years ago, they called themselves GPTelecom in France. A grandparent said “J’ai pété” was one of the first French sentences they taught their two-year-old American grandson. Some pointed out the French don’t pronounce the “T” at the end of chat but conceded the GPT part is hard to deny, with one joking their family renamed the AI tool “The Farty Cat.”