Support Public URLs in `image_url` (Visual LLM API)

[ElGigi]

Context

Currently, OVH’s Visual LLM API (OpenAI-compatible) only accepts images provided as base64 Data URLs within the image_url.url field. Example required today:

{
  "type": "image_url",
  "image_url": {
    "url": "data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0K..."
  }
}

Problem

• Base64 encoding increases payload size by ~33% compared to binary.
• Requests become unnecessarily large and inefficient, especially for multi‑MB images.
• Clients must handle base64 conversion on their side, adding complexity to integrations.

Expected Behavior (aligned with OpenAI API) The API should also accept direct public URLs in the image_url.url field, as in the official OpenAI implementation:

{
  "type": "image_url",
  "image_url": {
    "url": "https://example.com/cat.png"
  }
}

Benefits

• Significant reduction in request payload size.
• Faster and more efficient uploads.
• Simplified client-side implementation.
• Closer compatibility with the OpenAI API, ensuring easier migration for developers.

Suggestion

Enable the Visual LLM API to fetch images directly from provided public URLs, while keeping base64 Data URLs as an alternative option.

[DavidDelebecque]

Hi, Thank you for sharing your thoughts and feedback with OVHcloud. Your input is truly key and relevant to us. We're going to take your feedback into consideration and discuss how we can prioritize it in our roadmap. We'll keep you updated on any developments. Thanks