Yesterday, the internet buzzed with news of OpenAI’s latest GPT-4o (o for “omni”) release. It’s twice as fast, more powerful, and impressive in real-time user interactions. In the company’s Spring Update video stream, three employees showcased its abilities in facial recognition of emotions, instantaneous translation, and solving math equations from written inputs.

The big news, however, is that OpenAI will roll out this new version to all users, including those on their free plan. Yes, you can soon tap into all this AI capability for free.

Intrigued by the potential, I decided to test this new release with a visual framework. Here are the results.

Will it live up to its promise?

I started with an illustration I created a few years ago about the relationship between Ideas, Image, and Impact in building personal intellectual property (IP).

It’s a basic Venn diagram, but it works.

In-depth analysis

I requested more detailed interpretations from GPT-4o. Again, the response was swift, offering deeper insights.

In particular, GPT-4o analyzed the overlap areas in my Venn diagram, providing outcomes and examples.

Now, developing the potential meanings of the Venn circle overlaps is often challenging. But once articulated, they can add intellectual depth to your framework. So this was a positive output.

Here’s the analysis GPT-4o provided of the overlap areas:

GPT-4o also suggested practical applications for this framework in the areas of marketing, entrepreneurship, product development, and education.

If you’d like to see my entire chat, you can review it here. Note that I didn't use any complex prompts and approached this challenge as a new user likely would.

Improve the visual

Encouraged by the analysis, I asked how to make this Venn diagram a more effective and engaging visual.

GPT4-o provided a full roster of suggestions, ranging from design elements (color scheme, typography, labels, visual elements, and background) to structural and contextual enhancements. Again, impressive — although I didn’t agree with all the suggestions.

AI as designer?

Since things were going well, I asked ChatGPT-4o to make these suggested changes for me.

Here’s what it came up with.

Uh oh.

Not quite what I was hoping for.

I asked it to try again several times. Here is the best of those additional iterations. All these images were generated by DALL-E 3, the companion image creation tool from OpenAI.

As you can see, GPT-4o excels at analyzing images. But DALL-E 3's ability to generate images, particularly simple visual frameworks, isn’t ready for prime time — especially for those of us seeking to create them for a business context.

Errors abound. Words are often repeated or misspelled. A Venn diagram ends up with shapes that aren’t circles and don’t correspond to the overlap structure of a 3- or 4-circle Venn.
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With more detailed prompts, I probably would have generated much better visuals (although type remains a challenge). Other AI programs, such as Midjourney, are known to generate better image results.

The need for a human-directed sandwich

A colleague recently shared his approach to working with generative AI tools. He says it needs to be a human-directed sandwich — start and end with human guidance.

While GPT-4o has made significant strides in analyzing and interpreting visual frameworks, it’s still far from replacing human input in creating professional visuals.

This AI tool provides quick analysis and suggestions, but its image generation quality is limited. A balance between AI and human expertise is essential.

For now, GPT-4o is not replacing any design talent, and the need for visual literacy remains. But this is a quickly moving field. I'll report back again as new developments emerge.

❤️ My favorite visual delights

Here are this week’s gems from around the Web to help you build visibility, credibility, and authority:

⚖️ 5 Must-Have Terms in Your Independent Contractor Agreement​
As a solopreneur, your legal contracts are important documents to safeguard your interests and enable your business to run smoothly. The all-female team at Meyer Law offers this guide to help you craft solid agreements.

🎵 The Unofficial Bonnaroo Genre Venn Diagram​
​Bonnaroo is a popular music festival held each June in Manchester, Tennessee, with hundreds of musical groups of all genres. To celebrate last year’s event, Reddit contributor Mr_Turntable created a large-scale Venn diagram of all the participating bands and how they overlap in genres. Everyone who loves Venn diagrams will enjoy this wacky but highly informational visual.

🪝 Neal O’Grady’s Hooks Carousel​
Neal writes a startup growth newsletter with more than 100,000 readers, and he is a master at creating hooks — the engaging opening lines — in social media posts. In this LinkedIn carousel, he curates the top 30 LinkedIn contributors and provides color-coded analysis of their hooks. This is a great place to start if you want to level up your social media posts.

Thanks again for being a SOLO reader and coming along on this journey of visual exploration.
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See you next week,