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gpt-image-2

Hacker Approved

Ranked 4 of 22 image generation models by recommenders

Praised for faithful prompt adherence, photorealism and clean text, and for reasoning before rendering. Critics mostly flag strict censorship, a yellow tint and drift over multiple edits.

Praised for faithful prompt adherence, photorealism and clean text, and for reasoning before rendering. Critics mostly flag strict censorship, a yellow tint and drift over multiple edits.

89 people gave an opinion

recommend it
63
criticize it
26
approval share
71%
Each figure is one person. RecommendsCriticizes

Recommended in 8 of 13 months

  1. November 2025: not recommended
  2. December 2025: recommended
  3. January 2026: not recommended
  4. February 2026: not recommended
  5. March 2026: not recommended
  6. April 2026: recommended
  7. May 2026: recommended
  8. June 2026: recommended
  9. July 2026: recommended
  10. August 2026: recommended
  11. September 2026: recommended
  12. October 2026: recommended
  13. November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)

Why it carries the badge

  • 63 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
  • 2.4 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
  • Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.

The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works

What people say about it

The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.

Why people recommend it

Each mark is one comment

  • Follows prompts faithfully

    “the only one that consistently works for me and renders what I describe in the way I describe it”

    Comment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When AI Bubble Bursts”

    “far easier to steer and is significantly better in terms of prompt adherence”

    Comment from 4 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Astra”

    “I was quite impressed with how faithful it adhered to the prompts given”

    Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”
  • Photorealistic, hard-to-fake images

    “The fidelity to text, the photorealism, the ability to show the same character in a variety of situations”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

    “the best images from this model are so visually flawless that the only way to tell they're fake”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

    “this looks like parity with human excellence, there isn't much space for further improvement”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”
  • Reasoning before rendering

    “the only way you get image models that basically do reasoning is you glom a diffusion head on an LLM backbone, which is basically gpt image 2.0 and above”

    Comment from 17 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image Klein”

    “Reasoning before rendering is the thing that separates it from the pack rn”

    Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “What makes gpt-image-2 so good? Is the architecture of the training sets?”

    “interesting that GPT Image-2 managed to 2-shot this with thinking turned on”

    Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers”
  • Clean, accurate text rendering

    “The fidelity to text, the photorealism, the ability to show the same character in a variety of situations”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

    “The quality of the text is really impressive and I can't seem to see any artefacts at all.”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

What people warn about

Each mark is one comment

  • Strict content censorship

    “best image generator that I have tried, however it has one massive disadvantage: draconian censorship”

    Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.5”

    “the censorship system is really horrible if any two humans touching each other in sport is now crossing the line”

    Comment from 23 Jun 2026 in “ChatGPT Spontaneously Generates Sexual Violence and Hardcore Snuff Imagery”
  • Yellow color tint

    “gpt-2-image has such a yellow tinge though. It stands out badly on nearly any screen.”

    Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro”

    “gpt-image series is still affected by the yellow saturation issues”

    Comment from 21 May 2026 in “Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch”
  • Breaks down over repeated edits

    “It just breaks down in subsequent editing (around 3-4 editing prompts).”

    Comment from 1 Jul 2026 in “Nano Banana 2 Lite”

    “I'm been impressed when testing this model today, but it still can't consistently adhere to the following prompt”

    Comment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

    “It's still relatively trivial to create a moderately complex prompt and have it fail miserably.”

    Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”
  • Needs manual work for sequences

    “You still have to do some manual work if you want to create something like a comic”

    Comment from 18 May 2026 in “Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?”

    “good luck getting them to generate sprite sheets with consistent frames for animation”

    Comment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Super Dario”

Other image generation models people recommend

The four most recommended other image generation models, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.

gpt-image-2 compared with 4 alternatives
ProductRecommendCriticizeApprovalMonthsOwnedBadge
Nano Banana26515963%126 mo5 owners—
gpt-image-1797950%12——
FLUX.2665156%10——
gpt-image-2This page632671%8—Approved
Qwen-Image473855%10——
See all 22 image generation models, ranked

What people said

40 of the 122 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.

“the only way you get image models that basically do reasoning is you glom a diffusion head on an LLM backbone, which is basically gpt image 2.0 and above”

MixedComment from 17 Oct 2026 in “FLUX 3 Image Klein”

“just generated with the built in image gen, it does have an advantage there over Claude”

RecommendsComment from 28 Sep 2026 in “Show HN: Lofi Cities – Pixel-art city nights with browser-generated lofi”

“GPT-Image-2 already scored unsurprisingly very high: 12 out of 15 on text-to-image”

RecommendsComment from 20 Sep 2026 in “Qwen Image 2.1”

“best image generator that I have tried, however it has one massive disadvantage: draconian censorship”

MixedComment from 8 Sep 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.5”

“far easier to steer and is significantly better in terms of prompt adherence”

RecommendsComment from 4 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Astra”

“GPT 2 is almost always better (80+% of the time?) than Nano Banana 2, albeit slower”

RecommendsComment from 4 Sep 2026 in “GPT-6 Astra”

“gpt-2-image has such a yellow tinge though. It stands out badly on nearly any screen.”

MixedComment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Qwen 3.0 Image Pro”

“the only one that consistently works for me and renders what I describe in the way I describe it”

RecommendsComment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When AI Bubble Bursts”

“This was true until late April, when OpenAI's GPT Image 2 overtook Nano Banana 2.”

RecommendsComment from 31 Jul 2026 in “Apple Will 'Watch Everything Burn' When AI Bubble Bursts”

“the image generation parameters of GPT-image-2 are largely ineffective”

MixedComment from 22 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3 Is Competitive with Fable; Kimi K3 and Fable Is SoTA”

“good luck getting them to generate sprite sheets with consistent frames for animation”

CriticizesComment from 13 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: Super Dario”

“It just breaks down in subsequent editing (around 3-4 editing prompts).”

MixedComment from 1 Jul 2026 in “Nano Banana 2 Lite”

“the censorship system is really horrible if any two humans touching each other in sport is now crossing the line”

CriticizesComment from 23 Jun 2026 in “ChatGPT Spontaneously Generates Sexual Violence and Hardcore Snuff Imagery”

“gpt-image series is still affected by the yellow saturation issues”

MixedComment from 21 May 2026 in “Google's Antigravity Bait and Switch”

“You still have to do some manual work if you want to create something like a comic”

MixedComment from 18 May 2026 in “Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?”

“It's crazy what the latest version can pull off, with reference images, text, etc.”

RecommendsComment from 18 May 2026 in “Where Are the Vibecoded Photoshops?”

“It was (and still is) amazing to me that GPT Image 2.0 was this good at making a coherent manga page in one shot.”

RecommendsComment from 6 May 2026 in “Creating an animated manga with GPT Image 2.0 and Claude Code”

“interesting that GPT Image-2 managed to 2-shot this with thinking turned on”

RecommendsComment from 4 May 2026 in “Using "underdrawings" for accurate text and numbers”

“Now we just need open weights Nano Banana Pro / GPT Image 2, and Seedance 2.0 equivalents.”

MixedComment from 3 May 2026 in “Kimi K2.6 just beat Claude, GPT-5.5, and Gemini in a coding challenge”

“it's crazy how much things have improved on the image model for OpenAI”

MixedComment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Wild GPT-image-2 use cases”

“it's finally consistent enough to use to generate app store screenshots that look incredible”

RecommendsComment from 27 Apr 2026 in “Run this Claude skill in your repo to make upload ready app store screenshots”

“my initial complaints that the generated designs obscured the wearer's eyesight”

MixedComment from 24 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“I believe it does a way better job than the other image generation models”

RecommendsComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

“Reasoning before rendering is the thing that separates it from the pack rn”

RecommendsComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “What makes gpt-image-2 so good? Is the architecture of the training sets?”

“gpt-image-2 is VERY flexible with the resolution. You can use arbitrary resolution within the max pixel budget.”

RecommendsComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“OpenAI actually has really good adherence, but occasionally tends to introduce its own almost equivalent of "tone mapping"”

MixedComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“Octopus: good try, almost a pass, but socks don't cover the ends of all the tentacles”

MixedComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“There are a couple of AI-esque misspellings, but yeah the quality is remarkable, and rather scary.”

MixedComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“It's still relatively trivial to create a moderately complex prompt and have it fail miserably.”

CriticizesComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“I was quite impressed with how faithful it adhered to the prompts given”

RecommendsComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

“gpt-2-image has surprisingly been doing much better on more objective criteria in my test cases”

RecommendsComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

“you can definitely generate true transparent PNG files through the ChatGPT interface”

MixedComment from 22 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

“Images 2.0 als produces a lot of low frequency artifacts they are in all directions”

MixedComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“The quality of the text is really impressive and I can't seem to see any artefacts at all.”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“The fidelity to text, the photorealism, the ability to show the same character in a variety of situations”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “OpenAI Livestream”

“I'm been impressed when testing this model today, but it still can't consistently adhere to the following prompt”

MixedComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“this looks like parity with human excellence, there isn't much space for further improvement”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“the best images from this model are so visually flawless that the only way to tell they're fake”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“doesn't seem to have any "slop" standard look, the images it produces are quite diverse”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

“242 Elo points clear of the next best model and 93% win rate against random models”

RecommendsComment from 21 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”

Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.