During a livestream on Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the first major upgrade to ChatGPT's image-generation capabilities in over a year. ChatGPT can now leverage the company's GPT-4o model to natively create and modify images and photos.

Because the image generator is accessible in ChatGPT, users can also refine images through a multi-turn conversation. This makes tweaking images easier and allows the model to use the context of previous generations to create new ones. Since GPT-4o has access to the web, that context is also added to creating the images.

OpenAI has not confirmed a timeline for the free-tier release of the upgraded tool till now. The move reflects a broader industry trend where companies place their most powerful features behind paywalls, raising questions about accessibility and creative inclusivity in the AI space.