Introduction to AI Image Editing
For most of photography’s roughly 200-year history, altering a photo convincingly required either a darkroom, some Photoshop expertise, or, at minimum, a steady hand with scissors and glue. However, with the recent advancements in AI technology, this process has become much simpler. On Tuesday, OpenAI released a tool that reduces the process to typing a sentence.
The Development of AI Image Editing Models
It’s not the first company to do so. While OpenAI had a conversational image-editing model in the works since GPT-4o in 2024, Google beat OpenAI to market in March with a public prototype, then refined it to a popular model called Nano Banana image model (and Nano Banana Pro). The enthusiastic response to Google’s image-editing model in the AI community got OpenAI’s attention.
OpenAI’s GPT Image 1.5
OpenAI’s new GPT Image 1.5 is an AI image synthesis model that reportedly generates images up to four times faster than its predecessor and costs about 20 percent less through the API. The model rolled out to all ChatGPT users on Tuesday and represents another step toward making photorealistic image manipulation a casual process that requires no particular visual skills.
How GPT Image 1.5 Works
GPT Image 1.5 is notable because it’s a “native multimodal” image model, meaning image generation happens inside the same neural network that processes language prompts. This newer type of model treats images and text as the same kind of thing: chunks of data called “tokens” to be predicted, patterns to be completed. If you upload a photo of your dad and type “put him in a tuxedo at a wedding,” the model processes your words and the image pixels in a unified space, then outputs new pixels the same way it would output the next word in a sentence.
Capabilities of GPT Image 1.5
Using this technique, GPT Image 1.5 can more easily alter visual reality than earlier AI image models, changing someone’s pose or position, or rendering a scene from a slightly different angle, with varying degrees of success. It can also remove objects, change visual styles, adjust clothing, and refine specific areas while preserving facial likeness across successive edits. You can converse with the AI model about a photograph, refining and revising, the same way you might workshop a draft of an email in ChatGPT.
Conclusion
The release of GPT Image 1.5 marks a significant milestone in the development of AI image editing models. With its ability to generate images up to four times faster than its predecessor and at a lower cost, it has the potential to make photorealistic image manipulation a casual process that requires no particular visual skills. As AI technology continues to advance, we can expect to see even more sophisticated image editing models in the future.
FAQs
Q: What is GPT Image 1.5?
A: GPT Image 1.5 is an AI image synthesis model developed by OpenAI that can generate images up to four times faster than its predecessor and at a lower cost.
Q: How does GPT Image 1.5 work?
A: GPT Image 1.5 is a “native multimodal” image model that treats images and text as the same kind of thing: chunks of data called “tokens” to be predicted, patterns to be completed.
Q: What are the capabilities of GPT Image 1.5?
A: GPT Image 1.5 can alter visual reality, changing someone’s pose or position, or rendering a scene from a slightly different angle, with varying degrees of success. It can also remove objects, change visual styles, adjust clothing, and refine specific areas while preserving facial likeness across successive edits.
Q: Is GPT Image 1.5 available to the public?
A: Yes, GPT Image 1.5 is available to all ChatGPT users.
