There’s been a huge, somewhat controversial upgrade to GPT-4o. While 2025 has been the year of reasoning, the ability to build new features into traditional AI models has reaffirmed their value in everyday uses.
Enter ChatGPT’s the new image generation capability. Create, edit, blend images using pretty much any style you can think of.
People are creating different types of art, and it’s not the slop we saw with OpenAI’s DALL-E. It’s aesthetic, innovative and just fun to use. Like Midjourney, you can create the same imagery across different art styles – and all without the unpredictable sref codes.
The most popular so far has been anime’s Studio Ghibli aesthetic, but we’re now seeing other pop-culture references shining through. In this, there are questions around authenticity, echoing sentiments from Studio Ghibli’s Co-founder and Lead Animator Hayao Miyazaki – who showed disgust when shown AI generated art back in 2016. It’s now no surprise to see the studio have issued a cease and desist against OpenAI for misappropriation of copyrighted material. What’s worse is that copyright has become a growing pain of AI.
The challenge for AI today is that we’re creating systems that scale faster than our ability to govern them.
Yet, the fact remains, OpenAI’s new image gen is impressive. Its accuracy and attention to detail is like non-other in the market . The gap between what you ask for and what is created is smaller than ever before. The AI even handles text extremely well. Couple this with the seamlessness of combining designs or placing products in new generated environments, begs the question: is AI imagery now good enough for commercial use? And if so, will it kill human related professions like graphic design?
Arguably yes – if the bubbling legal risks settle that is. AI image generation is far too cost effective and gives businesses great control and agility. If you take the question out of business and into personal consumption, then no. Just because you can buy a fake Rolex doesn’t mean you will, and if you did, you won’t attach the same value to it. Human art gives us what its AI equivalent doesn’t – emotional resonance. We value the intangibles: time, experience, and the profound humanity that goes into anything man made just as we do its observable state.
From a project’s perspective, advancements in AI image gen have been mostly superficial. Yet as we now expect commercial use to skyrocket, using these tools for designing assets, projects and products becomes viable. As image based text also improves, workflow mapping may also benefit. I mean we could just make projects more visually appealing…
Have a new member of the project team? Create a pokemon style card to showcase their abilities… in fact, here’s one for ChatGPT.
And here’s the AI placing it on the top of Everest.
You get my point.
🥑 Food for thought
AI Image generation is growing fast in both capability and interest. What opportunities do you now have to imbue your project with more visually effective and appealing creativity? Or would you still not want to?
🐰 Rabbit hole
OpenAI gave a great demo breaking down the image gen
Watch the 14-min OpenAI demo
Image gen has created a paradigm shift opening an avalanche of new questions
What questions are people now asking?
It’s gone viral, Sam’s says OpenAi are overwhelmed
How has Sam Altman reacted to its virality?
Too viral?
Growing concerns on environmental sustainability and melting GPU’s
Imagine seeing your admired unique art-style turned into a meme.
Miyazaki’s reaction to AI art
