OpenAI's legacy image generation model supporting generations, edits with masks (inpainting), and variations
Settled by community votes across 2 shared challenges, with an AI judge weighing in on each.
DALL-E 2
17.7
arena score
#37 of 44 in Text-to-Image
Skill signature
Not enough comparable category data
The chart appears once both models have ratings across at least three shared arena categories.
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
15.7
arena score
#41 of 44 in Text-to-Image
Vote tally
Where the votes landed
DALL-E 2
100.0%
win rate
Ties
0.0%
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
0.0%
win rate
100.0%
0.0% ties
0.0%
Shared challenges
2
Challenge by challenge
The strongest take from each model on every shared challenge, with the AI judge's read.
The Reversed Rodeo
Text-to-Image“Horse riding astronaut in space — horse on top, not vice versa. Surreal, highly detailed, cinematic.”
DALL-E 2
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
100% wins
0% ties
0% wins
AI Judge Analysis
DALL-E 2
- + Attempts a painterly, surreal texture
- + Features a dramatic composition with a planet in the background
- − Failed the negative constraint: the astronaut is riding the horse
- − Significant anatomical distortions on the horse and astronaut
- − Low resolution and grainy textures
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
- + High resolution with crisp details on the spacesuit and horse
- + Clean, cinematic lighting and vibrant colors
- + Captures a sense of scale with a detailed planet below
- − Failed the negative constraint: the astronaut is riding the horse
- − Anatomical issues with the horse's legs appearing elongated and segmented
Verdict: Both DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium failed the spatial reasoning challenge to place 'horse on top' of the astronaut, providing a standard astronaut-riding-horse image instead. Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium is the winner due to significantly better image quality, lighting, and detail despite the prompt adherence failure shared by both models.
The Halloween Invitation
Text-to-Image“Vintage gothic Halloween party invitation. Dark parchment poster, spooky border with webs and thorns, central glowing jack-o-lantern, bats, twisted trees, moody night sky. Add elegant gothic title text saying "Halloween Party Invitation", a small scroll banner saying "You are invited to a night of frights", and event details at the bottom: Date: 30.10.2026 Time: 7pm Location: The Arches, NYC Spooky but polished, cinematic lighting, square format.”
DALL-E 2
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
AI Judge Analysis
DALL-E 2
- + Captures a strong vintage gothic aesthetic.
- + Expressive, painterly art style.
- + The border design integrates well with the theme.
- − Text is completely illegible and nonsensical.
- − Failed to include specific event details requested in the prompt.
- − Lacks a clear central jack-o-lantern.
Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium
- + Excellent adherence to all visual elements like jack-o-lanterns, webs, and trees.
- + High image clarity and professional layout.
- + Text is mostly legible even with minor misspellings.
- − Multiple spelling errors in the primary text (e.g., 'Halloweeen', 'Inviloween', 'Loccation').
- − Text layout is a bit plain compared to the 'elegant gothic' request.
Verdict: Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium is the clear winner as it successfully incorporated almost every specific element requested, including the jack-o-lanterns and the event details. While it struggled with perfect spelling, DALL-E 2 produced completely garbled text and failed to follow the specific content requirements of the prompt.
Next steps
Explore each model
Stability AI's 2.5-billion parameter Multimodal Diffusion Transformer with improvements (MMDiT-X) text-to-image model optimized for consumer hardware, featuring improved image quality, typography, and complex prompt understanding