Howdy wizards,
In this week’s edition:
ChatGPT’s wild new image generator: what it is and how it might change design
Some specific ways you can use it in your work
Read on to see some viable business use cases for image gen with 4o
Here’s what’s brewing in AI.
DARIO’S PICKS
AGI = All Ghibli Images. Source: OpenAI // GPT-4o
OpenAI’s GPT-4o model now has native image generation and it almost makes DALL-E seem like it belongs in a digital museum. It’s available right inside ChatGPT—just make sure you've got GPT-4o selected in the model picker.
Here’s the deets:
GPT-4o’s image generation is top of the line at rendering text and accurately following prompts
It’s really good at transforming images you upload by using them as visual inspiration (hello, all the Ghibli images all over your social media this week)
The accuracy of the image generation makes it not just impressive—but useful for many everyday design and communication tasks
OpenAI’s has released a series of short demos showcasing different aspects: character consistency, text rendering, detailed instruction following, transparent images and visual restyling.
Why it matters The devil is in the details when it comes to design—and OpenAI’s latest brainchild is the first image generator that gets the details right. We might be at a point where a designers’ workflow is truly changing, just like a developer’s job has been transformed lately by vibe coding and tools like Cursor.
As you might expect—this model is slow and GPU-intensive. Generations are way slower than DALL-E. The usage amount is also quite restricted: even on a paid plan, you will quickly hit the rate limits and have to wait 10ish minutes before you can resume using it. OpenAI also dialled back usage for free users to max 3 generations per day, saying their “GPUs are melting”.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH PREZI
Dario: Remember Prezi? The classic presentation tool just got an AI makeover, and it's transforming boring content into visual environments that might actually keep your audience awake. I've been testing their new AI features and found their AskAI text tools genuinely useful. These tools let you easily turn your presentation content into flowcharts, highlight key points, or transform paragraphs into bullets. Their initial AI-generated presentations definitely need some editing to shine, but still offer a fresh approach to visual storytelling that help your ideas stand out.
Here's how it works:
Generate a complete presentation framework from a simple prompt or PDF upload
Get a visual "world" related to your topic with Prezi's signature zooming interface
Transform your content with AskAI tools (no more switching to ChatGPT mid-design)
Great features for sharing your presentations with integrated audience analytics
UP CLOSE
Testing GPT-4o’s image generation on design tasks
I’ve taken the 4o model’s new image generation for a quick spin on some common graphic design tasks—so it’s easier to for you to judge what you can and cannot use it for in your own work.
Here’s some use cases where it really impressed me:
Who else fancies a cup of Wizard’s Wakeup?
Task & score | Verdict |
|---|---|
1. Icons/small illustrations — 9/10 | ✅ Tested this on several small illustrations and UI icons. The prompt following works really well when it’s just a single object. The model is nothing short of amazing at this use case. And the support for transparent backgrounds also makes the images much easier to include in a design workflow. |
2. YouTube thumbnails — 7/10 | ✅ Gets the visual concept right, but not the best at getting the faces accurately. In this case, I asked it to mimic this Mr Beast thumbnail. |
3. Logos — 7/10 | ✅ Does a fantastic job in making a draft of a concept. Though I’d still do several iterations on the result or polish it manually in an image editor, to make it shine. |
4. Product mockups — 7/10 | ✅ Very good. It messes up a bit on the small text, but in general the result of creating a fictional product is nothing short of amazing. |
5. Explainer graphics — 8/10 | ✅ The concept, the typography, the arrows—everything is in place. |
6. Product shot with model (model photo + product image) — 6/10 | 🤏 This feels at the edge of it’s ability—it mostly follows the prompt and gives an accurate rendering of the product, but as in the YT thumbnail the faces don’t fully resemble the original character. |
As you can see, there’s a lot of stuff that works really well.
Here’s the tasks I’ve tried where the result was not good:
One-shot infographics — 4/10: 🙅🏻♂️ also includes other text heavy stuff. It’s pretty clear that when you overload it with content it starts messing up—text gets unreadable, images look less polished, etc. You could probably still generate pieces of your concept individually, then patch together in something like Figma/Canva.
Data visualisations — 2/10: 🙅🏻♂️ this one is still totally off limits. I think data viz will stay firmly in the domain of traditional tools (that actually maps values to pixels in an exact way) for the foreseeable future. You might’ve already noticed the GPT-4o model has the mathematical precision of a toddler with crayons—so it easily messes up the value mapping needed for charts.
A big upgrade overall is that you can now ask for transparent images—this means the output is way more versatile and can easily be copied into tools like PS/Figma/Canva and used in your designs.
Other fascinating things people are using the new image generation for:
Creating product ads in different styles
2D character animation sprite sheets for games
Turning pictures from r/AccidentalRenaissance into actual renaissance paintings
Frame by frame animations — asking for multiple images and for the ChatGPT to use Python to stitch them into an animation
Before you start wallpapering your company's channels with AI cartoons, remember: everyone and their tech-savvy grandma has access to this now. The internet is already being absolutely flooded with these images.
That’s also why I think graphic designers’ jobs are still safe—what makes creative work stand out is not just technique, but taste and vision, something AI doesn’t have (for now..).
CONTEXT WINDOWS
Before throwing obscene budgets at AI consultants only to end up with fancy slides and buzzwords—check this out.
I recently launched Context Windows—a curated database of 700+ real-world AI implementation case studies in one searchable database. Use code WBIA-TWENTY at checkout for 20% off on lifetime access.
(also, I’m running a “refer a wizard” campaign — more info below)
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This newsletter is written & curated by Dario Chincha.
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