I’m trying to send an image to my OpenAI assistant for vision analysis. The problem is that I need to make sure the image gets processed for visual understanding only. I don’t want the assistant to treat it as a document for the file_search tool or try to run it through the code_interpreter tool. What’s the right way to upload and attach the image file so it only gets used for vision purposes? I’ve been looking through the documentation but I’m not clear on how to specify the file purpose when adding it to the thread.
just upload the image directly in the txt with a vision model like gpt-4-vision-preview. skip the files api - it’s for docs and code, not images. just drop the image in your prompt and it’ll do the vision analysis for ya.
totally get it, this confused me at first as well. no need to stress, just put the image url or base64 in your message for the vision analysis. files api is only for docs and retrieval, not for actual visual stuff.
Hit this exact problem last month building a product recognition feature. There’s a key difference between the Files API and putting images directly in messages. When you upload with file.create(), OpenAI automatically assigns files to tools like file_search or code_interpreter based on file type. For actual vision analysis, you need to embed the image right in your message content - either with a public URL or base64 encoding. That way the vision model processes it as visual input instead of treating it like a document to retrieve. Took me hours to figure out why my images weren’t getting analyzed properly.
Here’s the deal with image attachments in the API - don’t use the files system for vision analysis. Instead, drop the image URL or base64 data directly into your message content alongside your text prompt. The assistant picks up on visual content automatically when you’re using a vision model. If you upload through the files API, it’ll get treated like a regular document for file_search or code_interpreter tools. Make sure you know which method you’re using since it completely changes how the image gets processed.