Over the past several weeks, I’ve noticed a sharp decline in GPT-4o’s ability to follow explicit, layout-based instructions in image generation. The deeper issue isn’t that it fails to generate a design — it’s that it ignores precise, safe prompts in favor of “interpreting” them, no matter how detailed or specific the request is.
Example: I asked for a clean vector logo with the phrase “Live Laugh Loft” to appear in one single horizontal line next to a custom house icon. Despite using phrases like:
- “Do not stack the text”
- “Align all letters to one baseline”
- “Render the phrase exactly as typed: Live Laugh Loft”
…GPT-4o continues to stack the words vertically or apply its own layout logic.
I worked with ChatGPT through multiple iterations, refining the prompt down to a pixel-perfect spec, including design logic, sun placement, facial features, proportional details, and precise positioning of each word — only to hit the same wall again and again.
But this isn’t about one broken prompt.
It’s about a trend: GPT-4o now feels like it defaults to “safe” patterns over user-defined logic, even in clearly safe, creative, original requests.
- It ignores layout instructions
- It overrides direct design specs
- It won’t “trust” the user, even when they provide full structure and when i sketch the image on paper and say follow my sketch it can’t.
This undermines what made GPT feel collaborative in the first place. Where GPT-4 once worked like a co-creator, GPT-4o now acts more like a filtered design assistant — one that second-guesses, soft-refuses, or derails even high-quality prompts.
Please review these behavioral overrides. As a power user and creative, this makes complex workflows unreliable — and honestly, frustrating as hell.
Let me know if others are seeing this too.
To be clear i love this tool and use it on the daily. GPT has gone from a collaborative agent to a complacency assistant. Afraid to break boundaries and get creative. I understand all the criticism around AI and its ability to create but what’s done is done and i want my collaborative mine back in my pocket.