ChatGPT Images swipes at Google's Nano Banana, Adobe
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AI images created by ChatGPT Images. Credit: AI-generated images via ChatGPT
ChatGPT's image update — available starting today — shows another front has opened up in OpenAI and Google's battle to dominate AI.
Why it matters: Users have been marveling at the image advances in Google's Nano Banana, putting the pressure on OpenAI to show real progress to keep up.
Driving the news: The new ChatGPT Images is designed for both editing images and generating them.
- OpenAI says the tool offers precise edits while keeping details intact, and generates images up to four times faster.
- The update will appear in a new ChatGPT sidebar for all users, and in the API as GPT Image 1.5.
What they're saying: The original ChatGPT interface wasn't designed for creating images, Fidji Simo, OpenAI's CEO of applications, said in a blog post Tuesday.
- "The new image viewing and editing screens make it easier to create images that match your vision or get inspiration from trending prompts and preset filters," Simo said.
- "The model adheres to your intent more reliably — down to the small details — changing only what you ask for while keeping elements like lighting, composition, and people's appearance consistent across inputs, outputs, and subsequent edits," OpenAI said in a separate blog post.
State of play: The advanced image generation and editing model behind Nano Banana launched in late November 2025 and has the industry buzzing about studio-quality outputs, precise text rendering, multi-image blending, and natural-language edits.
- Nano Banana has been integrated into Adobe Firefly and Photoshop since its release.
- But ChatGPT Images' integration into ChatGPT (still the most popular chatbot in the world), could pose another big threat to Adobe, the once undisputed king of photo editing.
OpenAI teased the release of ChatGPT Images in a post on X with a yearbook-style image of CEO Sam Altman, presumably created with the new tool, and the words "Most likely to launch a new image model."
What we're watching: The AI race appears to be narrowing into a binary competition between OpenAI and Google, with the fronts they compete on widening.
