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AI Imagery Goes Pro: OpenAI’s Stunning Visual Upgrade Shakes Creative Workflows
OpenAI’s image leap, Gemini’s 1M-token power, nPlan’s AI scheduler, and ChatGPT’s new Google Drive link—reshaping how projects are delivered and managed.
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Table of Contents
This Week’s BIG thing
ChatGPT’s Viral Image Generation, is it Useful for Projects?
There’s been a huge, somewhat controversial upgrade to GPT-4o. While 2025 has been the year of reasoning, the ability to build new features into traditional AI models has reaffirmed their value in everyday uses.
Enter ChatGPT’s the new image generation capability. Create, edit, blend images using pretty much any style you can think of.
People are creating different types of art, and it’s not the slop we saw with OpenAI’s DALL-E. It’s aesthetic, innovative and just fun to use. Like Midjourney, you can create the same imagery across different art styles - and all without the unpredictable sref codes.
The most popular so far has been anime’s Studio Ghibli aesthetic, but we’re now seeing other pop-culture references shining through. In this, there are questions around authenticity, echoing sentiments from Studio Ghibli’s Co-founder and Lead Animator Hayao Miyazaki - who showed disgust when shown AI generated art back in 2016. It’s now no surprise to see the studio have issued a cease and desist against OpenAI for misappropriation of copyrighted material. What’s worse is that copyright has become a growing pain of AI.
The challenge for AI today is that we’re creating systems that scale faster than our ability to govern them.
Yet, the fact remains, OpenAI’s new image gen is impressive. Its accuracy and attention to detail is like non-other in the market . The gap between what you ask for and what is created is smaller than ever before. The AI even handles text extremely well. Couple this with the seamlessness of combining designs or placing products in new generated environments, begs the question: is AI imagery now good enough for commercial use? And if so, will it kill human related professions like graphic design?
Arguably yes - if the bubbling legal risks settle that is. AI image generation is far too cost effective and gives businesses great control and agility. If you take the question out of business and into personal consumption, then no. Just because you can buy a fake Rolex doesn't mean you will, and if you did, you won’t attach the same value to it. Human art gives us what its AI equivalent doesn’t - emotional resonance. We value the intangibles: time, experience, and the profound humanity that goes into anything man made just as we do its observable state.
From a project's perspective, advancements in AI image gen have been mostly superficial. Yet as we now expect commercial use to skyrocket, using these tools for designing assets, projects and products becomes viable. As image based text also improves, workflow mapping may also benefit. I mean we could just make projects more visually appealing…
Have a new member of the project team? Create a pokemon style card to showcase their abilities… in fact, here’s one for ChatGPT.
And here’s the AI placing it on the top of Everest.
You get my point.
🥑 Food for thought
AI Image generation is growing fast in both capability and interest. What opportunities do you now have to imbue your project with more visually effective and appealing creativity? Or would you still not want to?
🐰 Rabbit hole
OpenAI gave a great demo breaking down the image gen
Watch the 14-min OpenAI demo
Image gen has created a paradigm shift opening an avalanche of new questions
What questions are people now asking?
It’s gone viral, Sam’s says OpenAi are overwhelmed
How has Sam Altman reacted to its virality?
Imagine seeing your admired unique art-style turned into a meme.
Miyazaki’s reaction to AI art
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Together, we’ll deliver expert analysis, hands-on resources, and thought leadership to help project managers integrate AI effectively into their workflows. As Nicola Benjamin of PMG says, “AI is a tool to embrace.” Stay tuned for exclusive content, joint research, and actionable strategies that will revolutionise how you approach project management.
Explore more at Project Management Global.
What’s new: Tech
Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro Raises the Bar for AI Problem Solving
Google’s latest Gemini 2.5 Pro update just dropped, and it’s a game-changer. With support for 1 million tokens of context, audio input, and image object detection, this multimodal AI can now handle everything from coding to real-time transcription—and even understands diagrams and SVGs.
What Does This Mean for Me?
For professionals, Gemini 2.5 Pro is more than a tech flex—it can act as your powerful new teammate. Imagine AI that can digest entire project specs, transcribe meetings, analyse site photos, or generate code and visuals, all in one go. Whether you’re drafting scopes or managing BIM workflows, Gemini’s advanced reasoning and context retention offer serious boosts in productivity and project clarity.
Key Themes or Details
1 Million Token Context Window: Read and reason over vast technical documents or entire codebases.
Audio Input & Transcription: Capture and transcribe site meetings or field recordings seamlessly.
Image Understanding & SVG Creation: Ideal for blueprint analysis, diagram recognition, or visual asset generation.
Smarter Code Generation: Builds functional scripts, automations, or integrations based on complex prompts.
Enhanced Reasoning: Performs multi-step problem-solving with higher accuracy across disciplines.
Down the Rabbit Hole
💙 Other tech news we’re loving
🔗 OpenAI embraces Anthropic’s MCP, enabling smarter data access across AI models—perfect for project teams managing complex, siloed information.
🔗 Elon Musk merges X with xAI, combining talent and compute power to supercharge innovation across platforms—expect faster AI development cycles.
🔗 Mixture-of-Mamba introduces a new training method that slashes compute costs while maintaining performance, ideal for cost-conscious AI deployment in infrastructure and planning.
🔗 Leaked files reveal China’s censorship AI at scale—a sobering look at the risks of AI without transparency or oversight.
🔗 Perplexity now lets you complete tasks inside the app, turning search into action—great for real-time project queries and follow-ups.
🔗 DeepSeek’s V3-0324 model outpaces GPT-4.5 on key benchmarks, offering serious potential for performance-hungry project teams.
🔗 Watch this professor simplify AI with real-world insight into ethics, automation, and the future—ideal for teams new to AI or upskilling fast.
🔗 OpenAI’s new audio models can transcribe, translate, and even clone voices—think site meeting summaries on demand.
🔗 Perplexity eyes TikTok acquisition, aiming to rebuild it with an AI-first twist—could reshape content delivery and discovery.
🔗 Gemini’s Audio Overview now turns documents into podcast-style summaries—perfect for catching up on reports during your commute.
Presented by Cogram
Cogram is an AI assistant specifically designed for AEC to help professionals save time on documentation and prevent disputes.
Automated meeting minutes: Cogram drafts meeting minutes directly in your company’s template with tailored levels of detail, format, and style.
Works for virtual and in-person meetings: Cogram works across Zoom, Teams, and in-person meetings, such as site inspections and kick-off meetings.
Field reports in minutes: Cogram’s mobile app combines site photos with minutes from on-site discussions to draft field reports in minutes.
Project-wide insights: Ask questions about your projects and get answers drawn from every relevant meeting and email chain from that project for the most up-to-date information.
What’s new: Projects
10 Smartest AI Project Management Tools to Try in 2025
Forecast’s new roundup of the top 10 AI project management tools is a must-read for anyone looking to futureproof their workflows. From predictive task automation to real-time resource planning, these tools are blending machine learning with project delivery in seriously productive ways.
What Does This Mean for Me?
For teams these AI-driven tools promise to streamline everything from scheduling and risk analysis to budgeting and reporting. Whether you’re managing boots on the ground or coordinating digital assets, integrating AI can help anticipate issues, optimise resource use, and keep projects on track—without the spreadsheet stress. We will all soon be a managing swarms of AI and Agents!
Key Themes or Details
Forecast: Offers smart scheduling and budget automation, ideal for fast-paced delivery teams.
ClickUp: Combines AI with flexible dashboards and powerful automation for all-in-one project control.
Asana: New AI features help prioritise work, summarise updates, and accelerate task planning.
Notion: Blends AI-powered knowledge management with task tracking and team collaboration.
Wrike: Predictive analytics highlight potential project risks and workload bottlenecks.
Motion: Optimises team schedules automatically with calendar and task integrations.
Smartsheet: Uses AI to turn data into actionable dashboards and forecasts.
Trello: Now AI-enhanced with smart card suggestions and automation.
monday.com: Integrates AI to summarise project data and suggest next steps.
Zoho Projects: Built-in AI assistant helps with tracking, reporting, and decision-making.
Down the Rabbit Hole
💙 Other project news we’re loving
nPlan's innovative AI scheduling tool is now available in open beta. Explore it here: https://www.nplan.io/products/schedule-studio
🔗 Autodesk posts a 26% free cash flow margin, signalling stable performance in fiscal 2025—relevant for project pros relying on its design tools and tech stack.
🔗 Can AI design buildings? explores how generative tools are reshaping architecture—from layout planning to adaptive construction workflows.
Tip of The Week
Agent Workflows in Action
Big shoutout to Lawrence Roland for showcasing an impressive early use of ChatGPT’s new Operator agent. In a recent post, he walks us through how the Operator autonomously orchestrated a suite of AIs—Claude, Google Docs, and ChatGPT—to build a full project starter pack for… building a shed halfway up a crag! 🏗️🧗♂️
Here’s what the Operator did:
• Asked Claude how to set up the project.
• Wrote setup docs in Google Docs.
• Got a project mandate from Claude.
• Created a new project in ChatGPT and loaded it with documents.
• Continued generating project documents as needed.
👉 Watch the full process here (video, no sound).
What makes this brilliant for project professionals? It hints at how AI agents could soon automate your project initiation phase—writing mandates, setting scopes, and even managing knowledge libraries—all with minimal input.
🔧 Bonus hack: Lawrence also reveals how to sneak downloaded GDocs into ChatGPT’s file upload via your browser’s Downloads icon. Super handy for stitching cross-platform workflows together.
Definitely one to bookmark as you explore the world of AI agents in delivery.
What’s new: Productivity
ChatGPT Now Connects to Google Drive—A Revolutionary Solution for Teams
OpenAI has begun rolling out Google Drive integration for ChatGPT Team, allowing AI to pull in internal knowledge directly from your organisation’s files—securely and contextually. This new beta feature automatically adds Google Drive content to ChatGPT’s knowledge base, enabling faster, more relevant responses tailored to your team’s work.
What Does This Mean for Me?
If your project delivery team already lives in Google Workspace—Docs, Sheets, Slides—this update lets ChatGPT act as a smart assistant trained on your actual content. It can summarise reports, reference project briefs, or pull key insights from planning docs without you lifting a finger. For fast-paced sectors like construction, engineering, or real estate, that’s a real win for productivity and decision-making.
Key Themes or Details
Google Drive Integration (Beta): Pulls in relevant team files automatically, if enabled by your admin.
Secure & Permission-Aware: Only accesses what each user is authorised to see.
Contextual Responses: Answers are based on your team’s own documents—great for accuracy and relevance.
Rolling Out Gradually: Available to Team users now, with Enterprise to follow.
Broader Tool Integration Coming: Docs, CRM, collaboration platforms and more are in the pipeline.
Down the Rabbit Hole
One small click for your admin, one giant leap for project productivity.
💙 Other productivity news we’re loving
🔗 Microsoft adds deep research tools to Copilot, making it a powerful assistant for gathering insights, sourcing evidence, and drafting documents across industries.
🔗 Adobe reports a 1,200% surge in AI-driven retail traffic—highlighting how generative tools are reshaping consumer decision-making and digital engagement.
🔗 Google rolls out AI travel features across Search, Maps, and Gemini—expect similar planning tools to creep into project logistics and resource coordination.
🔗 New survey reveals AI adoption woes: 42% report internal division, 41% face resistance, and 27% are using unapproved tools—clear signs of growing pains in enterprise AI rollouts.
🔗 ChatGPT for Work gets new features, boosting productivity with better document handling, integrations, and AI that truly understands your team’s knowledge base.
🔗 Claude 3.7 shows promise in key sectors—from education to healthcare—while also pushing boundaries in image analysis with counterfactual reasoning.
🔗 Heavy ChatGPT users report more loneliness, raising important questions about human-AI interaction and how teams can use tools without losing connection.
🔗 Government services could be radically more efficient through AI—think streamlined planning approvals, faster reporting, and better citizen engagement in public infrastructure projects.
Podcasts of the Week
Lex Fridman Podcast with Dylan Patel: Inside the AI Hardware Arms Race
In this revealing episode with Dylan Patel, founder of SemiAnalysis, Lex unpacks the global battle for AI dominance—from DeepSeek’s budget-beating compute clusters to NVIDIA’s chokehold on the GPU market. A fascinating look at the infrastructure behind AI, ideal for anyone navigating tech, delivery, or digital transformation in complex industries.
One More Thing
Last week, I asked OpenAI’s o1 model about the most profound thing it knew. Its reply? A reflection on humanity’s endless curiosity and continual growth. But why does AI speak of "us"—as though sharing our human journey? It hints at a subtle paradox: our quest for control through AI might ultimately diminish it. Yet, could this paradox signal a future of hopeful symbiosis, where humans and AI flourish together?
Perhaps it’s time to trust the revolution we've started.
☕️This reflection came from studying the revolutions that came before.
Read the full story here