AI Image Generation is Coming to Microsoft Office
AI image generation has been one of the largest tech advancements in 2022, and now it’s coming to your office…thanks to Microsoft and OpenAI.
If nothing else, 2022 has clearly shown us how competition between companies is very beneficial to consumers. As new tech evolves and becomes available to the public, large companies are forced to up their game to stay ahead. Right now, Microsoft is one of the biggest companies playing in a high-competition space.
Microsoft and Google have long been competitors. Google and Microsoft both have their own search engines (Google and Bing), web browsers (Chrome and Internet Explorer), and suite of office tools (Google Workspace and Microsoft Office 365.) And now there’s a new player in the field, with popular design platform Canva dropping their own suite of office tools and text-to-image app.
Well, that’s good news for us, because the fierce competition is leading to some pretty sweet upgrades.
Enter…Microsoft Designer
Microsoft Designer is a new 365 office app that brings DALL-E 2 to your everyday office workflow. This is exciting news for those who want to incorporate AI art into their power points or word documents!
Next to Stable Diffusion and Midjourney, DALL-E 2 is one of the top AI art generators. Developed by OpenAI, access to DALL-E 2 was limited until very recently. Now the model is open to more users, but it runs on a credit pricing model. Each credit is the equivalent of one text prompt, and the price currently runs at $15 for 115 credits.
Overall, it’s still a cheap price to pay for the unlimited creativity that comes with AI-generated images. But Microsoft’s DALL-E 2 integration will be free for those who already have a Microsoft Office 365 subscription, making DALL-E 2 more accessible for those who use Microsoft office tools on a regular basis.
For those who closely follow business partnerships, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. Microsoft and OpenAI partnered up back in 2019 to scale AI tech, and they’ve already collaborated on several AI programs.
How Will Microsoft Designer Work?
Like any AI image generator, DALL-E 2 produces images based on a text prompt input. Instead of generating images directly through DALL-E 2, you will be able generate images through the Microsoft Designer office application and easily integrate the images in your projects.
But it doesn’t stop there. Microsoft Designer is going beyond simple image generation, and extending into design generation. With the Designer app you will be able to select design templates for social media posts, power point covers, or other graphics. Once you generate an image and select the one you want to use, Microsoft Designer will create a variety of graphics using that image.
Sound too good to be true? I thought so too, but this Microsoft Designer demo video looks pretty convincing.
Should You Start Using Microsoft Designer?
Whether you’ve been using Microsoft Office 365 for years, or you’re a die-hard Google Docs fan who won’t touch Microsoft office, this is big news for designers.
If Microsoft Designer is as good as it sounds, you will be able to create social media posts, poster designs, power points, website graphics, and much more within Microsoft Office 365…all using AI. Instead of digging through stock photos for your power point, you can generate one in a few seconds. Instead of spending fifteen minutes designing a pretty Instagram post, AI can do the work for you.
But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be the holy grail of AI design tools!
There are still several questions I have when it comes to using this tool in real life. For example, will Microsoft’s DALL-E 2 integration product high-resolution images? As of right now, DALL-E 2 produces images at a 1024x1024 pixel resolution. While that may work for small designs and social media graphics, that’s not a high enough resolution for large designs. Will Microsoft Designer provide an image upscaling function to compensate? I don’t know.
Additionally, how will Microsoft’s DALL-E 2 integration compete against Canva’s text-to-image app, which uses a Stable Diffusion integration? Once again, I don’t know, but the best way to find out is to test both tools!
Microsoft Designer is still in beta and isn’t available in Office 365 yet, but you can sign up for the waitlist here.
Happy designing!
