pretty amazing that in ~two years a 15 second latency AI image generation API that cost 4 cents lags behind competitors.

This product does not lag behind competitors. Once you take the time to understand how it works, it's clear that this is an order of magnitude more powerful than anything else on the market.

While there's a market need for fast diffusion, that's already been filled and is now a race to the bottom. There's nobody else that can do what OpenAI does with gpt-image-1. This model is a truly programmable graphics workflow engine. And this type of model has so much more value than mere "image generation".

gpt-image-1 replaces ComfyUI, inpainting/outpainting, LoRAs, and in time one could imagine it replaces Adobe Photoshop and nearly all the things people use it for. It's an image manipulation engine, not just a diffusion model. It understands what you want on the first try, and it does a remarkably good job at it.

gpt-image-1 is a graphics design department in a box.

Please don't think of this as a model where you prompt things like "a dog and a cat hugging". This is so much more than that.