ChatGPT Images 2.6 is here, and it can turn your photos into animated GIFs

OpenAI has just released ChatGPT Images 2.6 across all subscription levels, including Free. It’s only a 0.1 upgrade to the previous Images 2.5, so it should come as no surprise that not that much has changed. In fact, there are only two new features, but they’re both worth your attention.

Firstly, you can now use ChatGPT to make animated GIF images, and second, you can now upload a persistent reference image, so you don’t need to keep uploading it when requesting a lot of different edits.

The first change is perhaps the most immediately interesting, but the second one could become more useful in the long run.

More cat GIFs, please

The Internet can never have enough cat GIFs, so naturally I decided to try the new feature on a photo of my cat, Chester. While Halloween has just been and gone, I thought I’d use that as inspiration for the sort of image I wanted to make of my cat. I used a fairly simple prompt: “Can you make a Halloween GIF of my cat to share with family?”

ChatGPT obliged without any objection, and transformed my cat into a feline wearing a Halloween-themed hat and cape and blinking slowly as a pumpkin flickered in the background. It’s especially fun for my family because there’s no way he’d ever let a human dress him up like this.

Once you’ve created your GIF it gives you a shareable link, so you don’t need to host it anywhere if you want to link people to it. Alternatively, you can download it or share it straight to X, LinkedIn and Reddit.

What ChatGPT produced was ok, but it was hardly going to set the Internet on fire, so I followed up with “That’s cool, but it’s not very active, can you make it more active please? Get creative.”

“Now we’re talking!”, replied ChatGPT. “Your cat’s gone full witch mode — casting a spell with a raised paw, conjuring a floating, glowing pumpkin, then giving a triumphant little meow before licking their lips. A proper bit of Halloween mischief!”

Indeed, the resulting GIF was much better, and Chester’s movements looked realistic. I think this shows how important your prompt writing is — don’t be afraid to ask ChatGPT to get creative.

Time and time again

Of course, I might want to produce a GIF of this photo for a different occasion in the future so I asked ChatGPT: “Can you save the original photo as Chester so I can reference it again?”

After thinking for a second, it saved the photo as a reference image called Chester. It made a point that it was saving the original snap, not the Halloween versions, and said “In future chats, you can simply say something like: ‘Create a picture of @Chester dressed as a pirate.’ And I’ll be able to use his original appearance without you needing to upload the photo again.”

I tested it with the prompt “Make a GIF of @Chester on the moon” and it provided one of Chester as an astronaut chasing a butterfly. How the butterfly was surviving on the moon, and how Chester was surviving when his ears poked through his space helmet, I don’t know, but I’ll go with it anyway.

Saving a reference image is a genuinely useful new feature. It might not be as flashy as the GIF creation, but I think it’s going to come in handy for the future. Overall I’m pretty happy with the Images 2.6 update. Nothing major has changed, but it’s nice to know I can now create a GIF from an image whenever I want, using ChatGPT’s natural language input method.

The best thing about Images 2.6 is how little effort it takes to get something fun out of it. I didn’t need animation software, any technical knowledge or even a particularly clever prompt. All I needed was a picture of my cat and a willingness to let ChatGPT get creative. And now that Chester is saved as a reference image, I suspect this won’t be his last starring role.

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