DALL-E 2, an AI program that can create stunning images from a mere text input, is coming to Microsoft products, including the Bing search engine.
The company is adding DALL-E 2 access to streamline digital art creation for consumers who lack the skills to produce professional and unique images.
With DALL-E 2, a user simply needs to type in a text description, for example “an orange cat using a laptop,” and the program will do its best to create just that — all in less than a minute. DALL-E 2 is smart enough that it can produce the image in a variety of styles, including photorealistic art to abstract or cartoon-like images.
Last month, the research lab behind the program, OpenAI, opened up access to DALL-E 2 to the public, giving anyone a chance to use it for free. OpenAI is now expanding access even more through the Microsoft partnership, which was announced during its Surface event on Wednesday.
Redmond is first adding DALL-E 2 to a new company app called Microsoft Designer, which will be offered through Microsoft 365. The app promises to let users create social media posts, invitations, digital postcards, graphics, and more with the help of DALL-E 2.
“With Designer, there’s no need to spend time building cards or social media posts from scratch,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post. “And you no longer need to search through thousands of pre-made templates. Designer invites you to start with an idea and let the AI do the heavy lifting.”
The user simply needs to type in a description of the image they’d like to create. The Designer app will then tap DALL-E 2 to create several versions of the desired picture, which can then be customized with a frame, text, or other tweaks. “The Designer app is born out of Power Point, where Designer uses AI to make template suggestions as you build out a presentation,” Microsoft added.
The Designer app will initially arrive as a free web preview that users can sign up for early access. “Once the app is ready for general availability, it will be available both as a free app and with more premium features available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers,” Microsoft said. In addition, the company plans on eventually integrating the Designer app into Microsoft’s Edge browser, making it even easier to access.
The other way Redmond is adopting DALL-E 2 is by bringing it to the Bing search engine through a new “Image Creator” function. Microsoft views DALL-E 2 as a solution for when your Bing image search results fail to return the desired result. “With the new Image Creator from Microsoft Bing you will be able to create images that don’t yet exist, limited only by your imagination,” the company said.
The Image Creator function on Bing will also work by taking a text input. For now, Microsoft plans on releasing the feature through a limited preview for select geographies before expanding it further.
“As Image Creator becomes available, you will be able to access it by navigating to the Bing Images tab and clicking on 'Image Creator,' by going to bing.com/create or through the Image Creator icon in the sidebar in Microsoft Edge," the company added.
The expansion of DALL-E 2 may spark concerns about abuse since the program is adept at creating photorealistic images of whatever you desire. However, Microsoft says Open AI has already added filters and safeguards to prevent the program from creating images that violate its content policies. “On top of that, Microsoft has integrated techniques that further help to prevent misuse including additional query blocking on sensitive topics,” Redmond added.