OpenAI Takes Aim at Google with New Image Model

If you’ve been on X or Reddit in recent weeks, you’ve likely seen images created by an upcoming model from OpenAI floating around. Sharp-eyed people have pointed out that the new model is potentially being tested with some ChatGPT users and on leaderboards under code names. 

The images generated by that model, which some are calling “gpt-image-2,” are genuinely impressive and, in some cases, nearly indistinguishable from real images. (Bad news for those of us whose parents are already sending us AI-generated images they think are real.)

Beyond excelling at producing photorealistic images, the new image generation model could help OpenAI achieve a bigger goal: reaching 1 billion weekly active users of ChatGPT. The company had hoped to hit the milestone by the end of 2025 but it missed that goal and has been stuck in the 900 million WAU zone since then, most recently topping 920 million.