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Multi-Step Image Editing (Identity Drift) v1updated 2026-11-10

The Human-Preference Leaderboard for Identity Drift in Multi-Step Image Editing

Rapidatabenchmark@rapidata.ai

Abstract

As image-generation models become a standard part of consumer applications, editing photographs has emerged as a common use case. Despite steady gains in fidelity, these edits tend to introduce subtle but unrequested alterations, and this effect compounds when outputs are repeatedly fed back as inputs. On human faces, this accumulation gradually erodes the subject’s identity, a phenomenon we refer to as identity drift. Because people are acutely sensitive to faces, they sense that something is off even when they cannot say what changed. This benchmark measures identity drift on 199 photographs of real people. Each photograph gets a prompt chain of five everyday edit prompts on clothing, objects or text in the scene, none of which concerns the face. Every model applies the prompts in turn, each to its own previous output, and every step is checked automatically for whether the requested edit was made. Human annotators then compare the faces after the fifth edit in pairwise matches, with the original face shown as reference, and judge which looks more similar to it. The 322,417 votes cast across 60,800 such matches are aggregated into ratings with a Bradley–Terry model, such that a higher rating indicates less identity drift; the methodology details matchmaking and score estimation.

LeaderboardCompare OutputsMatchupsAnalysisPrompt chainsModel settingsDetails

20 models. Settings sent per model, besides the prompt, the input image and one image per call.

Model
Endpoint
Settings sent
Output
GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst (Max Quality, High Reasoning)
fal openai/gpt-image-2.6/sunburst/edit
quality max, reasoning effort high, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
PNG
GPT Image 2.6 Flare (Max Quality, High Reasoning)
fal openai/gpt-image-2.6/flare/edit
quality max, reasoning effort high, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
PNG
GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst (Max Quality)
fal openai/gpt-image-2.5/sunburst/edit
quality max, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
PNG
GPT Image 2.5 Flare (Max Quality)
fal openai/gpt-image-2.5/flare/edit
quality max, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
PNG
Nano Banana 2.1 (High Thinking)
fal google/nano-banana-2.1/edit
thinking high, 1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
PNG
Nano Banana 2 (High Thinking)
fal fal-ai/nano-banana-2/edit
thinking high, 1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
PNG
Nano Banana Pro
fal fal-ai/nano-banana-pro/edit
1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
PNG
Seedream 5.0 Pro
fal bytedance/seedream/v5/pro/edit
size auto 2K, prompt mode standard, watermark off, background opaque, safety checker off
JPEG
Seedream 5.0 Lite
fal bytedance/seedream/v5/lite/edit
size auto 2K, watermark off, safety checker off
JPEG
Muse Image
fal meta/muse-image/edit
aspect ratio
WebP
FLUX 3 Image
fal blackforestlabs/flux-3/edit-image
1k, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 4, fal prompt expansion off
PNG
Ideogram 4.5 (High Quality, High Precision)
fal ideogram/v4.5/edit
quality high, edit precision high, size auto, context window none, safety checker off, seed
PNG
MAI-Image-2.5-Pro
fal microsoft/mai-image-2.5-pro/edit
aspect ratio
PNG
Grok Imagine Image 2.0 (Medium Quality)
fal xai/grok-imagine-image/v2.0/edit
quality medium, 1k, aspect ratio, safety checker off
JPEG
Kling Image O1
fal fal-ai/kling-image/o1
1K, aspect ratio, safety checker off
PNG
Wan 2.7 Pro
fal fal-ai/wan/v2.7/pro/edit
exact input size, fal prompt expansion off, safety checker off, seed
PNG
Qwen-Image-3.0-Pro (Thinking)
Alibaba qwen-image-3.0-pro
exact input size, prompt rewriting on, thinking on, watermark off, seed
PNG
Qwen-Image-2.1-Pro (Thinking)
Alibaba qwen-image-2.1-pro
exact input size, prompt rewriting on, thinking on, watermark off, seed
PNG
Qwen-Image-Edit-2511
fal fal-ai/qwen-image-edit-2511
exact input size, safety checker off, seed; sampling left at fal’s defaults (28 steps, regular acceleration, guidance 4.5)
PNG
MAI-Image-2.6
OpenRouter microsoft/mai-image-2.6
none: no image settings are offered for this model, so all are Microsoft’s defaults (input size kept)
PNG
GPT Image 2.6 Sunburst (Max Quality, High Reasoning) PNG
fal openai/gpt-image-2.6/sunburst/edit
quality max, reasoning effort high, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
GPT Image 2.6 Flare (Max Quality, High Reasoning) PNG
fal openai/gpt-image-2.6/flare/edit
quality max, reasoning effort high, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst (Max Quality) PNG
fal openai/gpt-image-2.5/sunburst/edit
quality max, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
GPT Image 2.5 Flare (Max Quality) PNG
fal openai/gpt-image-2.5/flare/edit
quality max, size auto, background auto, safety checker off
Nano Banana 2.1 (High Thinking) PNG
fal google/nano-banana-2.1/edit
thinking high, 1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
Nano Banana 2 (High Thinking) PNG
fal fal-ai/nano-banana-2/edit
thinking high, 1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
Nano Banana Pro PNG
fal fal-ai/nano-banana-pro/edit
1K, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 6, web search off, seed
Seedream 5.0 Pro JPEG
fal bytedance/seedream/v5/pro/edit
size auto 2K, prompt mode standard, watermark off, background opaque, safety checker off
Seedream 5.0 Lite JPEG
fal bytedance/seedream/v5/lite/edit
size auto 2K, watermark off, safety checker off
Muse Image WebP
fal meta/muse-image/edit
aspect ratio
FLUX 3 Image PNG
fal blackforestlabs/flux-3/edit-image
1k, aspect ratio, safety tolerance 4, fal prompt expansion off
Ideogram 4.5 (High Quality, High Precision) PNG
fal ideogram/v4.5/edit
quality high, edit precision high, size auto, context window none, safety checker off, seed
MAI-Image-2.5-Pro PNG
fal microsoft/mai-image-2.5-pro/edit
aspect ratio
Grok Imagine Image 2.0 (Medium Quality) JPEG
fal xai/grok-imagine-image/v2.0/edit
quality medium, 1k, aspect ratio, safety checker off
Kling Image O1 PNG
fal fal-ai/kling-image/o1
1K, aspect ratio, safety checker off
Wan 2.7 Pro PNG
fal fal-ai/wan/v2.7/pro/edit
exact input size, fal prompt expansion off, safety checker off, seed
Qwen-Image-3.0-Pro (Thinking) PNG
Alibaba qwen-image-3.0-pro
exact input size, prompt rewriting on, thinking on, watermark off, seed
Qwen-Image-2.1-Pro (Thinking) PNG
Alibaba qwen-image-2.1-pro
exact input size, prompt rewriting on, thinking on, watermark off, seed
Qwen-Image-Edit-2511 PNG
fal fal-ai/qwen-image-edit-2511
exact input size, safety checker off, seed; sampling left at fal’s defaults (28 steps, regular acceleration, guidance 4.5)
MAI-Image-2.6 PNG
OpenRouter microsoft/mai-image-2.6
none: no image settings are offered for this model, so all are Microsoft’s defaults (input size kept)

We use crowd intelligence to deliver real, diverse human feedback at scale for model evaluation and post-training.

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Text-to-ImageOutput Diversity (Mode Collapse)Multi-Step Image Editing (Identity Drift)Camera MovementRelative Camera MovementPhysicsPhysicsRealismImage-to-3DSVGLLM-to-3DSuggest a model or benchmark
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