What Happened
On May 12, 2026, OpenAI retired DALL-E 2 and DALL-E 3. Existing API calls using those model IDs now return an error. The replacement is `gpt-image-2`, available through the Responses API with a built-in image generation tool.
If your code still references `dall-e-3`, it is broken.
The New API Shape
DALL-E had its own endpoint (`/v1/images/generations`). The `gpt-image-2` model works as a tool inside the Responses API:
response = client.responses.create(
model="gpt-4o",
tools=[{"type": "image_generation"}],
input="A flat minimal illustration of a robot holding a wrench"
)The image comes back as a base64 block in the response content. You decode it to get the PNG bytes.
Quality Tiers Replace Size Parameters
The old `size` and `quality` parameters are gone. The new parameter is `input_fidelity`:
- `low`: fastest, cheapest (~$0.006 per image at 1024x1024)
- `medium`: balanced
- `high`: highest quality (~$0.21 per image at 1024x1024)
Passing the old parameters returns a validation error.
Organization Verification Required
`gpt-image-2` requires your OpenAI organization to be verified. The verification process takes about 15 minutes and requires a government ID. Unverified accounts get a 403 on image generation requests.
This applies even if you had access to DALL-E 3 before. Verification is a new requirement specific to the image generation tier.
What Builders Should Do
If you built on the DALL-E API, you need to:
1. Update your model reference to use the Responses API with the image generation tool
2. Replace size and quality parameters with `input_fidelity`
3. Complete organization verification
4. Update your response parsing to handle the new base64 content block format
The capabilities are better. The migration is annoying. Build it in a branch and test against a real prompt before switching production traffic.
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