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ZDNET’s key takeaways

• I tested ChatGPT Images 2.0 on two active product UIs.
• The AI found design issues and suggested practical fixes.
• For solo developers, AI design review could be a big deal.

For the past week or so, I’ve been exploring the depths of OpenAI’s new ChatGPT Images 2.0 release. This is a much more consequential release than it first appears.

We’ve all been impressed with AI image generators. These tools make pretty pictures and can do some fun tricks. They can also produce a lot of AI slop. But, so far, they’ve been limited in their understanding of what they’re producing.

Also: 7 AI coding techniques I use to ship real, reliable products – fast

Images 2.0 adds subject-matter intelligence to image generation. This capability means ChatGPT can receive assignments and produce high-value outputs.

In this article, we’re going to look at one such type of assignment, updating a user interface. Previously, coding agents could take a shot at cleaning up a UI element here and there. The chatbots could make text-based recommendations on what needed fixing. But they couldn’t do the full design.

Now, they can. I fed two UI designs I’m actively working on into ChatGPT Images 2.0 on my $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan. In a few short minutes, ChatGPT returned two redesigned user interfaces, both of which resulted in a whole bunch of design improvements I plan to incorporate into my products.

Here are four recent articles that will bring you up to speed on what I’ve already found with this new tool:

I often use my non-ZDNET work as project fodder for ZDNET discovery articles. I try to avoid sharing product names and links because I don’t want any conflict of interest. But in this article, it’s necessary to show the product names. The names are part of the existing UI design that I’ve asked the AI to work on. If I pulled them out, it wouldn’t make as much sense. I’ll continue to avoid linking to the products themselves.

Also: I got 4 years of product development done in 4 days for $200, and I’m still stunned

Let’s get started.

Mac interface design

For this challenge, I had two interfaces I wanted to run by the AI. 

Also: I used Claude Code to vibe code a Mac app in 8 hours, but it was more work than magic

The first one is a Mac app I’ve been vibe coding with Claude Code since January. This project is taking a while because I only have an hour or two a week to work on it, and it uses MacOS’s internal AI for image processing and analysis.

Here’s the design as it exists in my app right now. A lot is happening here. I’m particularly invested in the big buttons on the left, because they reflect the brand colors for my wife’s e-commerce business. They also translate really well to the iPhone app:

I uploaded that screenshot to ChatGPT and fed it the prompt, “Redesign this user interface to make it more attractive and easier to use.” Here’s what ChatGPT Images 2.0 created:

At first, I didn’t like the alterations. The most obvious change was the loss of the colored buttons. But the AI also didn’t quite understand that there are viewing options at the bottom of the grid view.

Also: How AI has suddenly become much more useful to open-source developers

On the other hand, look at those red squares. Those are the areas from the new mockup I really like, and plan to incorporate into my UI:

• The set of actions on the lower left were icons on the iPhone app, but look far better with the UI presented by the AI.
• Likewise, the AI added a much clearer header zone at the top of the grid view, as shown in the top middle red box.
• The AI also spread out the pattern thumbnails, giving them more breathing room to make the selection box clear and attractive, as shown in the lower red box in the middle.
• The AI added a favorites option that I haven’t wired in, but really like.
• Finally, I like the idea of a persistent Added/Updated field at the bottom of the detail view.

My big takeaway from this exercise is those five new design notes I plan to incorporate into my product. I’m not redesigning the whole app to reflect the suggested UI. However, the image included some great ideas.

Plus, having a mockup like this will make it much easier to show Claude Code what I’d like it to do. This exercise is a great example of using the $20/month ChatGPT Plus plan and the $100/month Claude Code Max 5x plan to build better software.

Web interface design

Next up is the UI for the starting page for my security product. My design is clean but quite rudimentary, mostly reflecting the fact that I dislike coding in CSS.

Also: I did 24 days of coding in 12 hours with a $20 AI tool – but there’s one big pitfall

Last fall, in my first agent-based vibe coding project ever, I used OpenAI’s Codex in my ChatGPT Plus plan (which ran out of AI allotment quite fast) to redesign the UI from fairly ugly to unobjectionable. Here’s the result of that first pass last fall. I did the design, telling Codex where and how to lay out the CSS:

The results from my testing this week were interesting. I pasted the screenshot into ChatGPT, but accidentally hit return before I could give it a prompt. ChatGPT decided on its own to analyze the page, deducing that “The biggest issues are weak visual hierarchy, too much gray, a very long intro block, and three lower cards that compete equally for attention even though they are not equally important.”

It also recommended a “more modern admin aesthetic,” including:

• White card backgrounds instead of large gray panels.
• Softer borders.
• More spacing between sections.
• One strong accent color, used consistently for buttons, links, and active states.
• Shorter line lengths for body text.
• Better contrast between headings, subheads, and body copy.

Also: Claude Code made an astonishing $1B in 6 months – and my own AI-coded iPhone app shows why

At this point, I decided to engage Images 2.0 and instructed, “Provide me an image of the redefined interface.” Here’s what the AI produced:

This output also provides some design notes I can go back to Codex with. I use OpenAI’s Codex with the web product and Claude Code with the Mac product, primarily to give me experience with the two agentic coding tools so I can write about them. If I didn’t have writing here as my primary goal, I’d choose one tool or the other. I’ve found both to be equally helpful.

Also: How Claude Code’s new auto mode prevents AI coding disasters – without slowing you down

ChatGPT Images 2.0 decided to invent a logo (mostly because I hadn’t provided it with one in my first image). The AI added several features I liked.

First, I really liked the overall design aesthetic it recommended. It might be a lot of work to propagate that through the rest of the product (it’s a giant product), but I did like the design.

Additionally, I liked how the AI promoted three separate user-help areas: the Quick Setup zone, the Need Help zone, and the Configure Privacy/View Docs section at the top. While the original interface gave users access to information, it really didn’t make it obvious where to begin.

I also liked the Site Status section at the bottom. I’ve often thought about adding a feature like that, but was a bit daunted by the coding requirements, because the status elements would have to change based on which freemium plugins the user had installed. Still, seeing a representation of that feature made me want to add it.

This is game-changing

I feel this capability is as game-changing as ChatGPT was back when it first came out, and as agentic pair programming was when it landed last summer.

Also: I built two apps with just my voice and a mouse – are IDEs already obsolete?

I submitted two product user interfaces to the AI and received essentially peer-reviewed commentary, along with a set of prototype designs. As a solo programmer, this output is invaluable.

Even if I had a full in-house team, with programmers and designers on staff, it would probably have taken a week or so to run this analysis and construct prototypes to review. The payroll expenses alone for that project would have been fairly substantial. But for $20, I was given two very helpful, very constructive, and not-at-all-AI-stupid redesigns that contained actionable nuggets that will make my products better.

Just wow.

If you were pairing ChatGPT Images 2.0 with Claude Code or Codex, would you use the image mockup as a design brief for the coding agent? Let us know in the comments below.

You can follow my day-to-day project updates on social media. Be sure to subscribe to my weekly update newsletter, and follow me on Twitter/X at @DavidGewirtz, on Facebook at Facebook.com/DavidGewirtz, on Instagram at Instagram.com/DavidGewirtz, on Bluesky at @DavidGewirtz.com, and on YouTube at YouTube.com/DavidGewirtzTV.