GPT Image 1.5 from OpenAI is the most powerful image generator yet to ship inside ChatGPT and allows for sharper renders, greater instruction-following, and faster turnarounds.
In side-by-side testing with Google’s Gemini, Nano Banana Pro still looks just laggy enough — in coherence, typography, and the arrangement of complex scenes — to hold onto its crown for some more time.
The upgrade is now available for both free and paid ChatGPT users, along with the new Images tab that brings generations, edits, and style presets front and center. That ready accessibility is significant: more people are going to try creating images because it’s right there, one tap away from text chat.
What’s new in GPT Image 1.5 for ChatGPT image generation
OpenAI says GPT Image 1.5 has better text rendering, is more prompt-consistent, and suffers from fewer distortions. Those claims correspond with real-world behavior: captions and signage will be more legible, faces will hold together better under zoom, and object boundaries are cleaner during edits. Turnaround time also seems faster; multi-image batches arrive with less waiting, a change I particularly appreciate for creative iteration.
The editing pipeline is significantly improved. When requested to remove people or add in more scene, 1.5 appears to maintain global style and geometry better than the previous model did. And here’s where casual creators will experience the differentiator — quick “good enough” edits without having to visit pro software.
Head-to-head comparison with Nano Banana Pro
Interior design prompt: GPT Image 1.5 created a lovely open-plan living space that was really cozy, with richer textures than its predecessor, but background artifacts remained — say a set of legs becoming one fused mass in an armchair or cabinet lines just slightly off-center.
That was Nano Banana Pro’s output: more consistent lighting with cleaner geometry, so we consider that the more production-ready image without manual touch-up.
Comic layout: On a fantasy-versus-robots six-panel prompt, GPT Image 1.5 came through with dramatic art, even nailing the narrative twist — but returned seven panels and cut the last frame to weirdly dissonant prose.
Nano Banana Pro stayed close to the six-panel grid, kept characters and objects consistent across panels, and had beautiful gutters. For all but a few of the generators, wrangling multi-panel compliance is still a thing and Nano Banana Pro doesn’t slip.
Network diagram: Emphasizes fidelity of text and the logic of connectors in the diagrams. GPT Image 1.5 corrected misspellings from previous models and produced more distinct device icons, but missed one link in a single run. Nano Banana Pro retained all of the links and kept the fonts consistent. This fits with broader industry data that type is still a fragile edge in the case of diffusion-style systems.
Content-aware edits: Remove a hand from a nature shot and GPT Image 1.5 delivered the punchiest contrast and most pleasant color — while hallucinating delicate tessellations into fine textures, and diverging from the original aspect ratio. Nano Banana Pro’s fill integrated a little more coherently with the scene and helped hold framing despite being a shade less lively, for example.
Compositing: Dropping new furniture into a real kitchen, GPT Image 1.5 reduced distortions from previous ChatGPT models but not mismatched lighting.
Nano Banana Pro did a better job matching shadows and white balance, so there was less of a “sticker effect,” which can give composites away.
But variance matters as always with generative models — either system can ace a prompt on any given run. Averaged across many prompts, Nano Banana Pro still tends to produce more consistent results for text-heavy scenes and tasks that require a strict layout.
Why Nano Banana Pro is still a winner for precision work
The chasm isn’t about pure photorealism at this point — GPT Image 1.5 bridges that divide. It’s about reliability when you’re constrained: counting panels, obeying exact spatial relations, keeping type crisp and consistent, and keeping characters or objects recognizable from frame to frame. Google’s recent research focus on scene understanding and layout control seems to pay off in these edge cases, which do matter for designers, educators, and technical communicators.
There’s also the trust layer. Google’s SynthID watermarking and the industry-backed C2PA standard, developed with other organizations such as Adobe and the BBC, are bubbling up through creative pipelines to mark AI content and keep authentication in place. OpenAI has indicated commitments here, but clean and consistent labeling across outputs will be critical as businesses ramp up use.
Speed, access and cost issues for GPT Image 1.5 users
For GPT Image 1.5, the single most practical perk is ubiquity. If you’re already a ChatGPT denizen, then of course you get the new model by default, and the Images tab reduces friction for edits and permutations. Nano Banana Pro is still available via Google’s Gemini experiences, and the free-tier limits are generous, but many users will likely stick with the tool they’re already navigating.
For teams, the choice can boil down to throughput versus polish. GPT Image 1.5 is more suitable for when you want to brainstorm or iterate on something, or create a mood board. Nano Banana Pro usually needs fewer retries for diagramming, marketing layouts, or anything requiring exact counts/positions down to 1 point.
Bottom line: which image model should you use today?
GPT Image 1.5 is the biggest image upgrade ChatGPT has received — it’s in general snappier, cleaner, and more attentive to prompts.
If ChatGPT is your go-to car, this is a no-brainer “get in and use it now.” But for work that’s precision-heavy, where typography and panel counts and spatial logic can’t slip, Nano Banana Pro will still provide the more reliable output. It’s tight, but the front-runner is still the front-runner — for now.
