Microsoft has announced the launch of Bing Image Creator and the host of the new AI-powered Bing and Microsoft Edge, complete with a range of new features designed to enhance the search experience. These include the ability to create content, a new chat experience, and complete answers. The company has also revealed that it has seen more than 100 million chats to date, with people using chat in a variety of ways, from refining answers to complex questions to using it as a form of entertainment or creative inspiration.
To make the new Bing more visual, Microsoft has announced the introduction of Bing Image Creator, new AI-powered visual Stories, and updated Knowledge Cards. Bing Image Creator, powered by an advanced version of the DALL∙E model from OpenAI, allows users to create an image simply by using their own words to describe the picture they want to see. The new feature allows users to generate both written and visual content in one place, from within a chat.
According to research, the human brain processes visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, making visual tools a critical way people search, create, and gain understanding. Based on Bing data, images are one of the most searched categories, second only to general web searches. Historically, a search was limited to images that already existed on the web. However, with the new Bing, there are almost no limits to what you can search for and create.
For those in the Bing preview, Bing Image Creator will be fully integrated into the Bing chat experience, rolling out initially in Creative mode. By typing in a description of an image, providing additional contexts like location or activity, and choosing an art style, Image Creator will generate an image from your own imagination. Bing Image Creator preview will also be available in Microsoft Edge, making it the first and only browser with an integrated AI-powered image generator.
To ensure the responsible use of Image Creator, Microsoft has worked closely with OpenAI to build, test, and review mitigations for their integrations. They have also incorporated OpenAI’s safeguards, plus additional protections into Image Creator, to curb the potential misuse of the feature. The company has put controls in place that aim to limit the generation of harmful or unsafe images.
If the system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user. It is clear that AI generates Image Creator’s images, and the modified Bing icon in the bottom left corner of each image helps to indicate that the image was created using Image Creator.
The new Bing preview has been tested with people to get real-world feedback, and the company intends to roll out Bing Image Creator in a phased approach by flight with a set of preview users before expanding more broadly. They will initially only include Image Creator in the Creative mode of Bing chat, and their intention is to make it available in Balanced and Precise mode over time. Microsoft is also working on some ongoing optimizations for how Image Creator works in multi-turn chats.
In addition to Bing Image Creator, Microsoft has also announced the launch of new AI-powered Visual Stories and Knowledge Cards 2.0, which offer a more engaging way to search and interact with content, providing images, short videos, fun facts and essential information at a glance. These new features are designed to deliver more immersive experiences in Bing and Edge that make finding answers and exploring the web more interesting, useful, and fun.
Bing Image Creator integrated into Bing chat will begin to roll out to Bing preview users on desktop and mobile starting today. For those not in the new Bing preview, the preview experience of Image Creator is now available at bing.com/create for Bing users around the world in English.