Microsoft’s newest app Designer allows users to create art with AI-generated images

Microsoft has made a new tool to add to its roster of creator apps.

AI-generated art added to Microsoft

Microsoft announced that it will be adding AI-generated art to its Office suite. The app, called Designer, is offered for free with Office. It functions in a similar way to other AI technological models, such as DALL-E 2 and Canva. The goal is to allow users to essentially create clip art from a concept, letting the technology generate a picture, allowing the AI to create a variety of unique designs.

Preview of Designer

Microsoft Designer integrates its graphic design app with DALL-E 2 AI software, which was created by Microsoft-backed start-up OpenAI. DALL-E 2 was available as of April this year. Currently, Designer is only available for a web preview. The company wants to gain feedback from creators once the app is available to try out and use. Designer will allow people to add design ideas, along with create social media posts, graphics and other creative projects within the app.

The created images can also be downloaded and shared, either directly to social media or with friends and family. The app has a similar feel to PowerPoint, in the sense of presentation, with users having design options based on the content they would like to create. Microsoft said it has billions of slide designs available.

Create and Image Creator

Along with Designer, Microsoft has also included Create and Image Creator as additional parts of the Microsoft Creator tools available. The company will add an AI text-to-image model to its search engines Bing and Edge as well, according to the company’s blog post. The Microsoft Create site is meant to be used by anyone who would like to design social posts, videos, presentations, flyers and other artistic projects.

The company wants people to have the ability to use words not only for searching for content, but for also creating it. With this technology, if a description is entered with location and art style, the Image Creator will generate the artwork. Image Creator is also formed with DALL-E 2 software. The novel tool will allow users to type in a description of a picture they’re looking for and Image Creator will build it.

The software corporation executives say that the company plans on having Image Creator widely available soon to select locations. This will all be accessible through Bing Images and in the sidebar of Microsoft Edge.

AI-generated images and search engines

Although many people are interested in the AI-generated images and the endless possibilities, others are questioning if the technology is ready. Although there are already capabilities to type in a description to generate an image in search engines, the technological approach behind AI-generated images is slightly more complicated to create image results. The AI software that allows for image creation proves to be exciting and in-demand, but the technicalities behind it, such as uniqueness and quality of images, can possibly raise issues in the future.

The full launch date for Microsoft Designer has not been revealed yet, however, when it is, there will be both free and premium options available.