mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

An Empirical Study of GPT-4o Image Generation Capabilities

arXiv 2504.05979 ↗First posted 8 Apr 2025cs.CVcited by 25

On the map: Diffusion models → Image generation, text-to-image and editing

Abstract (arXiv)

The landscape of image generation has rapidly evolved, from early GAN-based approaches to diffusion models and, most recently, to unified generative architectures that seek to bridge understanding and generation tasks. Recent advances, especially the GPT-4o, have demonstrated the feasibility of high-fidelity multimodal generation, their architectural design remains mysterious and unpublished. This prompts the question of whether image and text generation have already been successfully integrated into a unified framework for those methods. In this work, we conduct an empirical study of GPT-4o's image generation capabilities, benchmarking it against leading open-source and commercial models. Our evaluation covers four main categories, including text-to-image, image-to-image, image-to-3D, and image-to-X generation, with more than 20 tasks. Our analysis highlights the strengths and limitations of GPT-4o under various settings, and situates it within the broader evolution of generative modeling. Through this investigation, we identify promising directions for future unified generative models, emphasizing the role of architectural design and data scaling. For a high-definition version of the PDF, please refer to the link on GitHub: hrefhttps://github.com/Ephemeral182/Empirical-Study-of-GPT-4o-Image-Genhttps://github.com/Ephemeral182/Empirical-Study-of-GPT-4o-Image-Gen.

Key facts. Cited by 25 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Image generation, text-to-image and editing, one of 14 directions in Diffusion models. First posted on arXiv 8 Apr 2025.

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Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 16; 2026: 9.

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  1. 2025Emerging Properties in Unified Multimodal Pretrainingcited by 855
  2. 2025ShareGPT-4o-Image: Aligning Multimodal Models with GPT-4o-Level Image Generationcited by 94
  3. 2025Muddit: Liberating Generation Beyond Text-to-Image with a Unified Discrete Diffusion Modelcited by 52
  4. 2025TokLIP: Marry Visual Tokens to CLIP for Multimodal Comprehension and Generationcited by 50
  5. 2025JarvisArt: Liberating Human Artistic Creativity via an Intelligent Photo Retouching Agentcited by 39
  6. 2025How Well Does GPT-4o Understand Vision? Evaluating Multimodal Foundation Models on Standard Computer Vision Taskscited by 14
  7. 2025EditMGT: Unleashing Potentials of Masked Generative Transformers in Image Editingcited by 12
  8. 2026DanceOPD: On-Policy Generative Field Distillationcited by 12
  9. 2025MV-CoLight: Efficient Object Compositing with Consistent Lighting and Shadow Generationcited by 8
  10. 2025HERO: Hierarchical Extrapolation and Refresh for Efficient World Modelscited by 8
  11. 2025SceneDecorator: Towards Scene-Oriented Story Generation with Scene Planning and Scene Consistencycited by 7
  12. 2025STAR: STacked AutoRegressive Scheme for Unified Multimodal Learningcited by 6
13 more
  1. 2026ImagenWorld: Stress-Testing Image Generation Models with Explainable Human Evaluation on Open-ended Real-World Taskscited by 6
  2. 2026HiFi-Inpaint: Towards High-Fidelity Reference-Based Inpainting for Generating Detail-Preserving Human-Product Imagescited by 5
  3. 2026InnoAds-Composer: Efficient Condition Composition for E-Commerce Poster Generationcited by 5
  4. 2026Breaking Dual Bottlenecks: Evolving Unified Multimodal Models into Self-Adaptive Interleaved Visual Reasonerscited by 3
  5. 2025MultiEdit: Advancing Instruction-based Image Editing on Diverse and Challenging Taskscited by 2
  6. 2025FlexDoc: Parameterized Sampling for Diverse Multilingual Synthetic Documents for Training Document Understanding Modelscited by 2
  7. 2025Real-World Adverse Weather Image Restoration via Dual-Level Reinforcement Learning with High-Quality Cold Startcited by 2
  8. 2026AI-generated Images Challenge Visual Trust in High-risk Scenarioscited by 1
  9. 2025Generate the Forest before the Trees -- A Hierarchical Diffusion model for Climate Downscalingcited by 0
  10. 2025Chain of Time: In-Context Physical Simulation with Image Generation Modelscited by 0
  11. 2026Structural MRI Synthesis for Alzheimer's Disease via Conditional Diffusion on Anatomical Maskscited by 0
  12. 2026ChatGPT Images 2.5 in the Wild: A Launch-Period Dataset and Detector Evaluationcited by 0
  13. 2026ThinkV2V: Unleashing the Reasoning Capability of MLLMs for Instruction-Guided Video Editingcited by 0

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  3. 2025Generative AI for Vision: A Comprehensive Study of Frameworks and Applications
  4. 2024From Noise to Nuance: Advances in Deep Generative Image Models
  5. 2025Seedream 4.0: Toward Next-generation Multimodal Image Generation
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  7. 2023Advancements in Generative AI: A Comprehensive Review of GANs, GPT, Autoencoders, Diffusion Model, and Transformers
  8. 2023GenTron: Diffusion Transformers for Image and Video Generation