Tools stores generated images in an owner archive when database image storage is enabled. New signed-in Image Generator results owned by a user are public by default, including their prompt and reference/source visibility, unless that owner disables public-by-default publishing in the Image Generator profile.
Signed-in users manage their own Image Generator work under:
/me/image-generator - generation workspace/me/image-generator/archive - owner archive/me/image-generator/publishing - live publication manager/me/image-generator/profile - personal Image Generator defaultsAdministrators use /admin/image-generator and /admin/image-generator/publishing for global archive and publication management. Older OpenAI image URLs remain available as compatibility entry points.
The public archive is available at:
/openai/images/archiveOnly images marked public are listed there. The archive can be filtered by user ID, category, and search text. Published images are globally ordered with the newest publication first while keeping user and category visible on each image card.
If an image has no category, it remains available without requiring a category name.
Each image in the owner archive has a Continue editing action. It opens a follow-up view where the archived image is attached as reference {1} for the next image generation.
This lets a nearly finished image be corrected without downloading and uploading it again. For example, the instruction can ask to correct a name or another small detail in {1} while preserving the rest of the image.
The new result is stored in the archive as usual and follows the owner's current Image Generator publication default. The result view includes Continue editing this result, so the same image chain can be continued through multiple revisions.
Signed-in users can also choose Use as reference on images in the public archive. A public image can be reused as an image reference by another user, but private prompts and private source material are not copied into the follow-up. Only the published image itself is reused.
Non-public owner archive images still follow ownership rules: they can be reused by the owner or an administrator.
The publication manager lets the owner change each stored image immediately without reloading the page. Image visibility, prompt visibility and reference/source visibility have independent live switches. Categories can also be saved or cleared directly on each row.
Bulk publication remains available for checked images. With JavaScript enabled, bulk changes are sent in the background and the page updates from the stored result returned by Tools. The ordinary form submission remains available as a fallback.
Users can independently choose whether to:
A normal user can only change images owned by that account. Administrators can manage publication globally.
The Image Generator profile at /me/image-generator/profile contains Publish my new Image Generator images publicly. It is enabled by default.
With the setting enabled, future stored results from the signed-in Image Generator workspace, archive follow-up generations, and Image Generator API requests owned by that user are immediately created with:
The owner can disable the setting to keep future owned Image Generator results private. The setting does not retroactively change existing images. It does not apply to anonymous guest generation or unrelated integrations such as Slack image generation. Categories are not assigned automatically.
The publication manager can still change the individual image, prompt and source visibility after generation. Public results appear in the public archive and can become the latest-public-image homepage feature when that administrator-controlled widget is enabled.
Images created by the X-bot keep their separate publication defaults:
x-botNormal users cannot remove the X-bot publication defaults through the publication manager. Administrators can override any publication field, including X-bot images.
Prompt and reference publication are separate from image publication.
A public image does not expose its prompt or source material unless those visibility settings are also enabled. The public archive only shows user-facing prompt/source information. Internal system context, internal provenance metadata, hashes, and other operator-only details remain outside the public archive.
Reference image bytes are publicly readable only when both the generated image and its reference/source visibility are public.
Stored image URLs under /media/generated-images/{uuid} follow the individual image's visibility state.
An unlisted UUID is therefore not treated as a public link by itself.