gpt-image-2
Hacker ApprovedRanked 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%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- 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” - Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “ChatGPT Images 2.0”
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” - Comment from 22 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.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nano Banana | 265 | 159 | 63% | 12 | 6 mo5 owners | — |
| gpt-image-1 | 79 | 79 | 50% | 12 | — | — |
| FLUX.2 | 66 | 51 | 56% | 10 | — | — |
| gpt-image-2This page | 63 | 26 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| Qwen-Image | 47 | 38 | 55% | 10 | — | — |
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”
“just generated with the built in image gen, it does have an advantage there over Claude”
“GPT-Image-2 already scored unsurprisingly very high: 12 out of 15 on text-to-image”
“best image generator that I have tried, however it has one massive disadvantage: draconian censorship”
“far easier to steer and is significantly better in terms of prompt adherence”
“GPT 2 is almost always better (80+% of the time?) than Nano Banana 2, albeit slower”
“gpt-2-image has such a yellow tinge though. It stands out badly on nearly any screen.”
“the only one that consistently works for me and renders what I describe in the way I describe it”
“This was true until late April, when OpenAI's GPT Image 2 overtook Nano Banana 2.”
“the image generation parameters of GPT-image-2 are largely ineffective”
“good luck getting them to generate sprite sheets with consistent frames for animation”
“It just breaks down in subsequent editing (around 3-4 editing prompts).”
“the censorship system is really horrible if any two humans touching each other in sport is now crossing the line”
“gpt-image series is still affected by the yellow saturation issues”
“You still have to do some manual work if you want to create something like a comic”
“It's crazy what the latest version can pull off, with reference images, text, etc.”
“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.”
“interesting that GPT Image-2 managed to 2-shot this with thinking turned on”
“Now we just need open weights Nano Banana Pro / GPT Image 2, and Seedance 2.0 equivalents.”
“it's crazy how much things have improved on the image model for OpenAI”
“it's finally consistent enough to use to generate app store screenshots that look incredible”
“my initial complaints that the generated designs obscured the wearer's eyesight”
“I believe it does a way better job than the other image generation models”
“Reasoning before rendering is the thing that separates it from the pack rn”
“gpt-image-2 is VERY flexible with the resolution. You can use arbitrary resolution within the max pixel budget.”
“OpenAI actually has really good adherence, but occasionally tends to introduce its own almost equivalent of "tone mapping"”
“Octopus: good try, almost a pass, but socks don't cover the ends of all the tentacles”
“There are a couple of AI-esque misspellings, but yeah the quality is remarkable, and rather scary.”
“It's still relatively trivial to create a moderately complex prompt and have it fail miserably.”
“I was quite impressed with how faithful it adhered to the prompts given”
“gpt-2-image has surprisingly been doing much better on more objective criteria in my test cases”
“you can definitely generate true transparent PNG files through the ChatGPT interface”
“Images 2.0 als produces a lot of low frequency artifacts they are in all directions”
“The quality of the text is really impressive and I can't seem to see any artefacts at all.”
“The fidelity to text, the photorealism, the ability to show the same character in a variety of situations”
“I'm been impressed when testing this model today, but it still can't consistently adhere to the following prompt”
“this looks like parity with human excellence, there isn't much space for further improvement”
“the best images from this model are so visually flawless that the only way to tell they're fake”
“doesn't seem to have any "slop" standard look, the images it produces are quite diverse”
“242 Elo points clear of the next best model and 93% win rate against random models”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.