"Generate it with DALL-E"
stops working on August 30.
OpenAI's official "DALL·E" GPT inside ChatGPT shuts down for good on August 30, 2026. Image generation itself isn't going anywhere — the model behind it has already moved on to GPT Image 2. Here's what actually ends, and what doesn't.
It's the app that's ending,
not the pixels
The underlying model swap already happened months ago. What's ending now is a different, separate thing.
Guides written even last year still casually say "generate it with DALL-E." But OpenAI retired the DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3 models on May 12, 2026, and ChatGPT's image generation has run on a successor model ever since. On top of that, OpenAI's standalone "DALL·E" GPT — the dedicated app inside the ChatGPT GPT store — is being fully removed on August 30, 2026. OpenAI's own release notes spell out that date, which puts us exactly three days out as of today.
The confusing part is that "the model retired" and "the app retired" are two separate events. The model side changed first: in December 2025, GPT Image 1.5 quietly replaced DALL-E 3 as ChatGPT's default. Then on April 21, 2026, the more capable GPT Image 2 shipped as the stable release and is what powers ChatGPT Images today. So image generation as a feature isn't disappearing at all — only the interface still wearing the DALL-E name is.
From a diffusion model
to a reasoning autoregressive one
DALL-E and GPT Image 2 don't just have different names — they draw differently.
What's disappearing is a name and an app —
not the capability.
Three groups should care
Anyone with old docs or wikis
If a blog post, internal wiki, or training manual still says "generate it with DALL-E," today's the day to swap the wording to "ChatGPT Images" or "GPT Image 2". Readers who follow that instruction won't find an app by that name anymore.
People with saved images inside the DALL·E GPT
If you've generated images inside conversations with the DALL·E GPT, download them before August 30 or you may lose access. Tom's Guide walks through exactly how, with the same deadline.
Developers still hardcoding "dall-e-3"
If your code calls the API with the old model ID directly, that's a separate track from this consumer-facing GPT retirement — check OpenAI's API deprecation schedule independently rather than assuming this news covers it.
What to actually do
The list is short. Search your internal docs and style guide for "DALL-E" and flag every mention. Then, if you have any images sitting in DALL·E GPT conversations, download them before the deadline. Going forward, standardize on "ChatGPT Images" or "GPT Image 2" as the name — that alone prevents most of the confusion this transition causes.
This isn't image generation going away
The easiest misread here is "ChatGPT is losing image generation." It isn't. What's being retired is specifically OpenAI's official DALL·E GPT interface — regular ChatGPT Images, built on GPT Image 2, keeps working exactly as before. Custom GPTs that users have built with image generation enabled are unaffected too; they're not part of this retirement.
In other words, this is OpenAI consolidating a product surface it had let sprawl, not shrinking a capability. Looking at GPT Image 2's technical profile, the actual generation quality has moved forward compared to the DALL-E era, not backward. What's becoming obsolete is a name, not what it could do.