SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI has introduced a new image generation feature within its ChatGPT platform, enhancing the chatbot’s capabilities to create visuals from complex and highly detailed prompts as of Tuesday, 25 March 2025.
This update integrates image generation into the broader suite of tools offered by ChatGPT, allowing users to describe intricate scenarios—such as a multi-panel comic strip with specific dialogue and characters—and receive corresponding images within moments.
While earlier versions of ChatGPT included image generation via a separate tool known as DALL·E, the new version unifies these functions under a single system. The release reflects a broader trend in artificial intelligence development, where chatbots are evolving beyond text to offer multimodal interaction, including image creation, speech recognition, and even video processing.
The latest upgrade is powered by GPT-4o, a foundational model that allows ChatGPT to respond not only to text but also to voice commands, images, and video content. The platform has also gained the ability to speak, further enhancing its interactive potential.
Originally launched in late 2022, ChatGPT was trained using large volumes of internet text and developed skills such as code generation, poetry composition, and question answering. Its image generation capabilities were introduced about a year later with the release of DALL·E, but until now, the systems remained separate.
The integration means the chatbot can now draw from both visual and textual training data simultaneously. This enables it to handle more abstract or unconventional image requests, such as a bicycle with triangular wheels—tasks that traditional AI image generators typically struggled to execute.
“This is a completely new kind of technology under the hood,” said Gabriel Goh, a researcher at OpenAI. “We don’t break up image generation and text generation. We want it all to be done together.”
The updated version of ChatGPT is now accessible to users of both the free and subscription-based services, including ChatGPT Plus at US$20 per month and ChatGPT Pro at US$200 per month, which offers access to OpenAI’s full suite of tools.
Notably, OpenAI remains under legal scrutiny. In December 2023, The New York Times filed a lawsuit against the company and its partner Microsoft, alleging copyright infringement related to the use of news content in training AI systems.
