The first image generator created by OpenAI was called DALL-E and revealed in a blog post on 5 January 2021.
The name DALL·E is a creative blend of :
🎨 Salvador Dalí (the surrealist artist)
and
🤖 WALL·E (the animated robot from the 2008 Pixar movie)
🧠 It symbolizes :
- Dalí → Represents creativity, surrealism, and imagination — aligning with the AI’s ability to generate fantastical and artistic images.
- WALL·E → Represents technology, intelligence, and a lovable machine — highlighting the AI/robotic aspect of the model.
The AI model DALL-E was never made available to the public. DALL-E2 and DALL-E3 were the successors of DALL-E and they were both accessible by ordinary people.
In July 2021, Boris Dayma developed an open-source image generator called DALL-E Mini.