GPT Image 2 All API

Sync mode: waiting and timeouts (since 2026-08-27)

A sync request waits up to 280 seconds. If the image is not ready after about 95 seconds, the server sends the HTTP 200 headers and writes one space every 15 seconds to keep the connection alive, then appends the full JSON once the image is ready (leading whitespace is valid JSON; every parser and the OpenAI SDK handle it as-is). 2K/4K high renders that take 2–3 minutes are therefore no longer cut off with a gateway 524.

The trade-off: once the headers are sent the status code cannot change. If the task fails after the 95-second mark (for example an upstream content filter rejecting the finished image), the response is still HTTP 200 and the error is carried in the body as {"error": {"code": ..., "message": ..., "task_id": ...}} with no data field. Check the error field as well as the status code. Failures within 95 seconds return real status codes: content moderation 400 (code content_policy_violation), invalid input 400, insufficient balance 402, upstream busy 503, upstream failure 502, timeout 504.

Every sync response carries an x-apimodels-task-id header. If your client disconnects on its own timeout, use it with GET /v1/images/generations?task_id=... to fetch the result; the task is neither cancelled nor billed twice because of the disconnect.

Pass stream: true to use the OpenAI image streaming contract (SSE) instead: ": processing Ns" comment lines while waiting, an image_generation.completed / image_edit.completed event (with b64_json and url) on success, and an error event on failure. This path has none of the status-code limitation above and is the recommended option if you can change one line. Renders budgeted beyond two minutes can also use the native async contract in Option 2.