I’m married to Claude. But for image generation, I see other models — and since ChatGPT dropped Images 2.0 on April 21, I’ve been rethinking the whole lineup.
Up until recently, Nano Banana 2 was doing the image work for our clients. It was good. Good enough that we stuck with it.
Then ChatGPT Images 2.0 landed. We ran it against our actual client briefs — fashion product shoots, campaign assets, sale creative — and within a week, we’d moved.
This isn’t a benchmark post. I’m not going to walk you through abstract scores. What I’ll tell you is what made the call easy, and what it looks like in production.
THE SIDE BY SIDE
Same prompt. Two models. Here’s what came out.
We ran the same fashion brief through both models. Below is what each one produced.
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Nano Banana 2 Dramatic movement, cinematic lighting — strong editorial feel |
ChatGPT Images 2.0 Clean, catalog-ready execution — on-brief and consistent |
Both are usable. But they’re doing different jobs. More on that in a minute.
WHY WE SWITCHED
Two things made the call.
We didn’t switch because it looked impressive in a demo. We switched because it solved two specific problems we’d been working around for months.
01 · TEXT INSIDE IMAGES IS FINALLY SOLVED
~99% character accuracy. Including non-Latin scripts.
Sale tiles, promotional banners, multilingual creative — these used to mean a Photoshop pass after generation. Every time. ChatGPT Images 2.0 gets the text right inside the image on the first output. For brands running across multiple markets, that’s not a small thing. That’s hours back per campaign.
02 · FASHION PRODUCT DESIGN IS WHERE IT SINGS
It plans the layout before it generates. That changes everything.
Fabric holds across variations. Fit and proportion stay consistent when you’re testing colourways or fabric directions. What used to be a day of back-and-forth with a design team to get usable options is now minutes. The outputs land at a quality level the team can actually work with — not just admire and then redo.
ChatGPT Images 2.0 is outperforming everything else for the work we do. That’s not theory — that’s what’s running in production right now.
WHERE TO START
Depends on where you are right now.
The entry point looks different depending on the size of your operation.
01 · IF YOU’RE A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER
You don’t need a stack. You don’t need API keys.
Open ChatGPT, upload a product photo, and ask it to do something real — a sale tile with text on it, a lifestyle scene, a banner. Five minutes of actual testing will tell you more than any writeup can. Start there today.
02 · IF YOU’RE OPERATING AT SCALE
Multiple SKUs. Multiple markets. A design team and a campaign calendar to keep moving.
The work here is matching the right tool to the right job and making sure your team is using each one properly. ChatGPT Images 2.0 plugs into existing workflows — and if you’re already running AI agents for content or product work, it belongs in that stack.
THE TOOL BREAKDOWN
What we reach for — and when.
This is the current lineup in our client work. Not a ranking. Just what each tool actually does well.
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ChatGPT Images 2.0 Product images and shoots. Where the execution work happens now. On-brief, on-brand, fast. This is the new first call. |
Midjourney Inspiration. Concepting. Moodboards. When the visual direction is the deliverable. ChatGPT Images 2.0 is better at execution. Midjourney is still better at taste. |
Nano Banana 2 On the bench. Still in the stack — just not the first call anymore. It did good work. The landscape moved. |
The tool is almost never the deciding factor. Strategy is. Workflow is. But when a better tool shows up for a specific job, you move. That’s what happened here.
WHAT’S NEXT
Want the full picture on AI tools for ecommerce?
Knowing which model to use for which job is one piece. Building the strategy around it — the workflows, the team habits, the integration into your actual operations — that’s where the real gains are.
If you’re working through what that looks like for your store, explore how Tribe Gen AI works with ecommerce brands — or grab a copy of AI for Ecommerce, Kelly’s practical guide to building a real AI strategy without the noise.
