What is ducttape?
A community-authored explanation of the codename circulating on LMArena since late 2025, what people have observed, and why the name matters.
The codename
"ducttape" (also written "duct-tape" or "duct tape") is the anonymous handle an image-generation model has been testing under on LMArena since late 2025 and into early 2026. Nobody at OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or any other lab has publicly confirmed it. It is a community codename, not a product name.
On the Arena interface it sometimes appears as a numbered variant — duct-tape 1, duct-tape 2, duct-tape 3 — representing different model versions or settings. Community consensus is that duct-tape 2 produces the most balanced output across prompts.
What people are seeing
Three properties show up in almost every side-by-side post. First: text rendering. Posters, menus, signage, packaging mockups, album covers, and brand moodboards come out with legible, properly kerned type — still a rare capability in image models as of early 2026.
Second: layout fidelity. When a prompt specifies a composition ("three panels, the third one is vertical"), ducttape actually obeys it. When a user supplies a reference image, the output preserves angle, crop, and palette more faithfully than Nano Banana Pro or Seedream 4 in the same prompt.
Third: multilingual text. Korean, Japanese, and Chinese characters render correctly rather than as decorative nonsense. This has been the single strongest signal to non-English communities that something unusual is in testing.
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What nobody knows yet
There is no confirmed lab of origin. There is no public API. There is no official name, pricing, context window, or release timeline. Anyone claiming otherwise is guessing.
Past precedent is instructive but not predictive. In mid-2025 the codename nanobanana was similarly tested on LMArena before Google confirmed it as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image. Sites that sat on the codename early captured disproportionate organic traffic when the reveal landed. ducttape is in the same pre-reveal window today. Whether it turns out to be a next-generation OpenAI model, something from a lab nobody is watching, or a mid-tier update, the community attention is real.
Why this site exists
ducttapeai.app is a community tracker, not an official property. The job for now is to collect observations, keep the record honest, and give interested people a way to hear the moment the codename resolves into a real name. When that name is announced — and once there is a legitimate way to generate with the model — generation will be added on this same domain.