Microsoft introduces DALL-E 2 to the masses with Image Creator and Designer

Tech giant Microsoft is making a significant investment in DALL-E 2, OpenAI’s AI-powered system that generates images from text, by bringing it to first-party services and apps.

This week, during Microsoft’s Ignite conference, the firm announced that its integrating DALL-E 2 with the newly announced Microsoft Designer app and Image Creator tool in Microsoft Edge and Bing.

Ai image generators have exploded in popularity with the advent of DALL-E 2 and other open-source alternatives like Stable Diffusion in recent years.

In September 2022, OpenAI said that over 1.5 million users were actively creating over 2 million images per day with DALL-E 2, including authors, artists, and creative directors. Brands such as Nestle, Stitch Fix, and Heinz have also piloted DALL-E 2 for ad campaigns and other commercial use cases.

Seeking to bring DALL-E to an even wider audience, Microsoft is launching Designer, a web app akin to Canva that can generate designs for posters, presentations, digital postcards, invitations, graphics, and more to share on social media and other channels.

Designer will remain free during a limited preview period. However, once the Designer app is generally available, it will be included in Microsoft 365 Family and Personal subscriptions and have “some” functionality free to use for non-subscribers. The Image Creator will remain free to use on Bing and Microsoft Edge.