AIbase reported on April 26, 2025: OpenAI recently announced that the image generation capabilities of its flagship multimodal model, GPT-4o, are now officially integrated into the custom GPTs feature of ChatGPT. This update marks a significant advancement, enabling user-created, customized AI assistants to directly generate and edit images, opening up new possibilities for content creation, design, and education.
Seamlessly Integrated Image Generation
GPT-4o's image generation capabilities were gradually rolled out to free, Plus, Pro, and Team users on ChatGPT and the Sora platform starting March 25, 2025. Unlike previous reliance on external models like DALL-E 3, GPT-4o's image generation is built into the model itself, allowing for the direct generation of high-quality images from text prompts. Now, this functionality extends to custom GPTs. Users can enable the "GPT-4o Image Generation" option in the ChatGPT custom GPT editor to create their own AI assistants with image generation capabilities. This update replaces the previous DALL-E 3 backend, significantly improving generation speed and image quality.
Key Features and Applications
The application of GPT-4o image generation in custom GPTs demonstrates impressive flexibility and practicality. Users can generate photorealistic images, stylized illustrations, or complex design assets using natural language prompts. Here are its core advantages:
Precise Text Rendering: GPT-4o accurately embeds clear, readable text into images, ideal for creating charts, menus, invitations, or infographics.
Optimized Multi-turn Interaction: Users can iteratively refine image details through conversation, with the model maintaining contextual consistency. This is perfect for character design, brand asset development, or storyboard creation, which often require multiple revisions.
Complex Instruction Following: The model handles detailed prompts containing 10 to 20 objects, ensuring accurate representation of object relationships and characteristics.
Versatile Style Adaptation: From realism to cartoons, hand-drawn to high-resolution, GPT-4o generates images in various artistic styles to meet diverse creative needs.
For example, a custom GPT in the fashion industry can generate clothing design sketches; one in education can create intuitive teaching charts; and one in marketing can quickly produce social media advertising materials. These capabilities provide users with a way to create high-quality visual content without needing professional design skills.
Usage and Limitations
To use GPT-4o's image generation, users need to enable the option in the ChatGPT custom GPT editor and describe the desired image using a text prompt, specifying details like color codes, aspect ratios, or transparent backgrounds. Generation may take a few seconds to a minute, depending on prompt complexity. Despite its power, the current implementation has limitations. For instance, some users report that image generation's adherence to custom GPT instructions is only about 50% reliable, indicating the feature is still experimental. Additionally, large images like posters may experience cropping issues, requiring further optimization. OpenAI states that future updates will improve the functionality's stability and performance.
Broad Access and Security
Currently, GPT-4o image generation is available to all ChatGPT subscription tiers, including free users (limited to 3 uses per day). Enterprise, education users, and API developers are expected to gain access in the coming weeks. To ensure content safety, all generated images embed C2PA metadata to indicate their origin. OpenAI also employs internal search tools and review systems to strictly limit the generation of content involving real people, nudity, or violence.
Significant Impact on Developers
For developers, the upcoming release of the GPT-4o image generation API will further facilitate its integration into applications. Compared to traditional image generation models, GPT-4o's multimodal architecture reduces the cost of switching between models, providing a smoother development experience. This update also suggests OpenAI is working towards a unified multimodal technology stack across ChatGPT, Sora, and its API, potentially enabling broader functionality expansion in the future.
Future Outlook
The integration of GPT-4o image generation into custom GPTs not only enhances the practicality of AI assistants but also provides users with more intuitive and efficient creative tools. While some technical challenges, such as instruction adherence stability and image cropping issues, remain to be addressed, its potential is clear. AIbase predicts that as OpenAI continues to optimize the model and expand API access, GPT-4o will drive greater transformation in content creation, commercial design, and education. AIbase will continue to monitor GPT-4o's progress, providing you with in-depth insights into cutting-edge AI technology.
