Seedream 4.0: ByteDance’s Leap in AI Image Creation
Seedream 4.0 redefines free AI image creation with 4K quality, faster speed & smarter editing to empower creators worldwide. 
Seedream 4.0 is here — ByteDance’s latest step forward in AI image generation. It’s faster, more refined, and built to give creators greater freedom in how they bring ideas to life.
Rather than simply adding new tricks, this release focuses on improving the overall experience: from speed and resolution to editing and multi-image workflows. For designers, marketers, and artists, it delivers a smoother path from concept to final output.
In this blog，we’ll take a closer look at what Seedream 4.0 brings to the table and why it deserves a spot in your creative toolkit.
What Is Seedream 4.0?
Seedream 4.0 is ByteDance’s next-generation multimodal model for image creation and editing. But instead of positioning itself as “just another text-to-image engine,” it aims to be a creative hub. Here’s what stands out:
- Real-time speed: Backed by a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture, it can generate an image in about 1.8 seconds — fast enough to keep up with human ideation.
- Versatile workflows: Text-to-image, reference-based editing, and multi-output creation are all built into a single system, removing the friction of switching apps.
- Reference power: You can feed in up to six images to guide style, characters, or composition, and get as many as nine matching outputs — perfect for storyboards, catalogs, or design series.
- Consistency baked in: Because generation, editing, and enhancement live in one pipeline, the results stay stylistically coherent without constant tweaking.
Seedream 4.0 doesn’t market itself as a “nano-banana killer,” but the implicit comparison is hard to ignore. Where Google’s model set the standard for fast, realistic edits, ByteDance’s take feels more creator-centric — about building an ecosystem for people who need both speed and scalability.
Five Core Upgrades: Speed, Aesthetics, and Intelligence
- More Creative Modes
Seedream 4.0 supports flexible combinations of text and image input. Whether it’s text-to-image, image-to-image, multi-image editing, or context-driven batch generation, the model adapts. Your creativity is no longer limited to a single workflow.
- Smarter Reasoning
This model doesn’t just “draw” — it thinks first. By combining world knowledge with contextual understanding, it respects physical and temporal constraints, can continue comic panels, and even solve puzzles. Its powerful in-context reasoning generation makes it feel more like a creative partner than a mere tool.
- Greater Stylistic Freedom
From baroque elegance to cyberpunk neon, Seedream 4.0 enables highly flexible artistic style transfer. You can even blend and invent new styles, while the model ensures visually pleasing and high-quality results.
- Flexible Editing & Generation
With advanced precise editing and visual-signal controlled generation, the model produces images at optimal ratios, adapts to references, and allows custom dimensions. Resolution now scales all the way up to 4K ultra-HD, delivering sharper detail than ever.
- Faster Performance
Thanks to a redesigned architecture and aggressive distillation-based acceleration, Seedream 4.0’s image generation speed is over 10× faster than Seedream 3.0 — making iteration seamless and near real-time.
Eight Creative Superpowers
If the core upgrades build the foundation, these eight features are the soul of Seedream 4.0:
Precise Editing
Add, remove, or replace elements with natural-looking results — all via simple text prompts. Perfect for ad design, e-commerce retouching, or film post-production. 
Flexible Referencing
Extract characters, styles, or structures from a reference image and reimagine them in new settings. Turn a 2D sketch into a 3D render. Recast a character in any scene. 
Visual Signal Control
Built-in support for Canny, Depth, and Mask, plus the ability to guide generation with sketches or outlines. A game-changer for pose control, architecture, and UI prototyping. 
In-Context Reasoning
Seedream 4.0 doesn’t just make “pretty pictures.” It generates images that make sense. Complex scenarios remain detailed, logical, and coherent. 
Multi-Image Reference Generation
Feed up to 10 reference images to merge styles, extract character traits, or blend environments — for cohesive, believable results. 
Multi-Image Output
Generate multiple images in one go, with consistent style and continuity. Ideal for storyboarding, comics, or brand campaigns. 
Advanced Text Rendering
Breakthrough clarity for text within images. From equations to tables and diagrams, educational and academic visuals are finally accurate. 
Adaptive Aspect Ratio & 4K Generation
Automatically balance composition based on semantic needs or references. Produce ultra-sharp 4K images suitable for commercial-grade projects. 
Now Live on VModel
With Seedream 4.0, creative work enters a new chapter. Whether you’re a designer, illustrator, developer, or simply someone with ideas to share, this model removes barriers and expands what’s possible.
Now live on VModel, Seedream 4.0 brings faster speed, higher quality, and smarter editing — everything you need to create without limits. Start exploring today and see where your imagination can take you！
Developers: integrate it into your workflow via the VModel API for programmatic generation, batch jobs, and automation.