What to know

  • OpenAI now lets free ChatGPT users create images using its DALL-E 3 model. 
  • Free users can generate up to two images per day. Simply prompt the AI chatbot what you want to see to generate images. 
  • You’ll still need ChatGPT Plus to get past the daily restrictions. 

All free ChatGPT users can now access DALL-E 3 and create up to two images per day. With access to the DALL-E 3 image model, now anyone can prompt ChatGPT to generate images. The company took to X (formerly Twitter) to announce free access to ChatGPT’s image generation capabilities.

First introduced in September last year, image creation with DALL-E now joins the rank of several ChatGPT Plus exclusive features that have ultimately trickled down to free users over time. 

It’s simple enough to use: Simply prompt ChatGPT to create an image and it’ll do the rest. If you’re not satisfied with the creation, click on ‘Regenerate’. To download the image, hover over it and click on the down arrow. 

You’ll see a ‘suggested prompt’ to create images on the new chat page as well. Users can generate images even if they’re not logged in or are having a ‘Temporary chat’ – which is ChatGPT’s incognito mode.

The feature is already available for most users. But since you’re bound to reach the daily limit very soon, you’ll have to be judicious with it unless you want to pay $20 per month for its use. To its credit, ChatGPT does at least tell you when you’ll be able to create images the next day to the exact minute. 

Because of the two image per day restriction for free ChatGPT users, the ability to generate DALL-E 3 images with ChatGPT isn’t truly free the way it is on Bing, which lets you create unlimited free images, even if they take longer to create after the first 25. For that, a ChatGPT Plus subscription is still good to have.