ChatGPT adds animated GIF creation with Images 2.6 model

OpenAI is adding GIF generation to ChatGPT using its Images 2.6 model. Users can create animations from text or photos and adjust speed and individual frames, and characters stay consistent across frames. OpenAI says users now generate over four billion images per week.

Why it matters: Frame-to-frame consistency is the hard part of generative animation, so this moves image models toward lightweight video-like output without a full video model. The four-billion-a-week figure shows image generation is a mass-market habit that is driving compute demand.