Microsoft Launches Bing Image Creator
Microsoft’s Bing just got a whole lot more visual. The company has released Bing Image Creator, an AI image generator within Bing Chat and Microsoft Edge, that is capable of creating images from textual descriptions.
Users can describe what types of images they’d like to see and select an art style. The tool then generates a square of four high-resolution images with a small Bing logo in the bottom-left corner. The logo is intended to signal to viewers that the image is AI-generated.
The image creator is currently only available to a group of Bing and Edge preview users in English, but Microsoft promises wider language support in the future. Those who aren’t part of the preview can visit bing.com/create or join the waitlist.
This new feature is gradually rolling out through Bing’s Creative Mode and Edge’s Image Creator icon in the sidebar. Microsoft intends to make the tool available in Balanced and Precise modes, improve its functionality in multi-turn chats, and introduce new capabilities and advancements.
Bing Image Creator relies on DALL-E technology developed by OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. The technology is based on OpenAI’s GPT-3 natural language processing model and a generative adversarial network (GAN), which can generate new images from textual input.
To prevent the generation of harmful content, Microsoft and OpenAI have implemented extensive controls. “When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user,” Microsoft says, adding that it’s committed to deploying AI systems following its Responsible AI principles and standards.
In addition to the Bing Image Creator, Microsoft introduced two other visual search features. Visual Stories will display images and short videos. Knowledge Cards 2.0, previously similar to Google’s knowledge panels, will feature AI infographics, including charts, graphs, and timelines. Some might also include AI audio narration and videos.
These new features and Bing Image Creator are intended to make “exploring the web more interesting, useful and fun,” Microsoft explains. Thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E, Microsoft’s Bing Chat will allow users to generate both written and visual content with just a prompt. Previously, users could only search existing images on the web. Bing Image Creator is the first-ever and currently only browser that can translate written descriptions into images.
