It's designed so that ads can be more easily integrated and make them harder to spot.
I've got visions of The Truman Show. In the middle of my question about vacation ideas ... GPT: "Why don't you let me fix you some of this new Mococoa Drink? All-natural cocoa beans from the upper slopes of Mount Nicaragua. No artificial sweeteners!"
Maybe, but it's a reality that most of the general public do prefer cookbooks with pictures. I suspect openai would end up doing this anyway just by targeting the general consumer. It's configurable.
I'm more worried about picture accuracy: usually the benefit of pictures in recipes is to see what you're aiming at (eg, how finely chopped something is), but I don't know if the image model is up to that level of detail.