Microsoft intros Designer graphic design app w/ AI imagery integration

Along with the launch of new Surface laptops and PC last week, Microsoft introduced a graphic design app to add in its Office offerings called the Microsoft Designer.

Microsoft Designer 0

Designer integrated with AI-generated art

The software comes with AI-generated imagery that can ‘instantly’ come up with a variety of designs thanks to its integration of the text-to-image model DALL-E 2 by OpenAI.

“With Designer, there’s no need to spend time building cards or social media posts from scratch. And you no longer need to search through thousands of pre-made templates,” said Liat Ben-Zur, Corporate Vice President at Microsoft in a blog post.

Microsoft Designer Fi2

Ben-Zur noted that early technologies like DALL-E 2 is new, and it is expected to evolve and improve. It said that Microsoft and OpenAI is working closely to prevent DALL-E 2 coming up with inappropriate results.

“For example, OpenAI removed explicit sexual and violent content from the dataset used to train the model, and Microsoft deployed filters to limit the generation of images that violate content policy.”

Check out Designer video teaser below:

Designer on Edge and Bing

Microsoft said that it also plans to integrate Designer into its Edge browser, “…delivering AI-powered design suggestions to visually enhance social media posts and other visual content without having to leave your browser window.”

On further note, the tech giant announced the Bing Image Creator running on the same AI technology. “Simply type in a description of something, any additional context like location or activity, and an art style, and Image Creator will make it for you,” the blog read.

Designer very much resembles Canva, of which the latter released a slew of workplace products and features, such as Canva Docs challenging MS Word.

Designer availability

Although Designer isn’t entirely available yet to the general public, those interested may join the waitlist for a limited web preview of the app.

A spokesperson from Microsoft told CNBC that Designer will become available at free tier and a premium version for Microsoft 365 subscriptions for business and family.

What AI model does Microsoft Designer use to generate images?

Designer uses the DALL-E 2 text-to-image model by OpenAI.

How does Microsoft prevent inappropriate images from being generated?

OpenAI removed explicit content from training data, and Microsoft deployed filters to limit policy violations.

Will Designer be available in Microsoft Edge?

Microsoft plans to integrate Designer into Edge for AI-powered design suggestions.

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