The name Dall-E is an homage to the two different core themes of the technology, hinting at the goal of merging art and AI technology. The first part (DALL) is intended to be evocative of famous Spanish surreal artist Salvador Dali, while the second part (E) is related to the fictional Disney robot Wall-E. The combination of the two names reflects the abstract and somewhat surreal illustrative power of the technology, that is automated by a machine.

Dall-E was developed by AI vendor OpenAI and first launched in January 2021. The technology uses deep learning  models alongside the GPT-4 large language model as a base to understand natural language user prompts and generate new images.

Key Features Include:

• Generate unique images from text prompts (e.g., “an astronaut riding a horse”) with photorealistic quality.

• In-painting and out-painting: edit inside an image or expand it beyond original borders.

• Supports multiple styles and combinations of attributes, objects, backgrounds, and artistic aesthetics.

• Safety & filtering controls: built-in to prevent generation of disallowed content.