Microsoft is teasing a bespoke AI image generator. The model, called MAI-Image-1, was designed in-house and works using text prompts. It is the third AI model Microsoft has debuted this year, following MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-1-preview, both released in August. The company, which is OpenAI’s largest investor, has been seeking to put some breathing room between itself and the startup to better position the fledgling firm for independence and profitability. And products exclusive to Microsoft surely won’t hurt that company’s bottom line. “We’re creating AI for everyone,” Microsoft says, calling MAI-Image-1 “the next step on our journey.”

Although MAI-Image-1 is not yet officially released, Microsoft says it is coming to Copilot and Bing Image Creator “very soon.” For now, interested parties can try it out in LMArena, an open platform hosted by UC Berkeley that also has its own rating system. MAI-Image-1 entered the LMArena rankings in the top 10.

Out of the gate, Microsoft’s image model is getting high marks. PetaPixel says MAI-Image-1 “delivers excellent photorealism,” and is notably “outpacing DALL-E,” OpenAI’s image generator.

“The Microsoft AI team explained that one of its goals was to avoid the ‘repetitive or generically-stylized outputs’ that have become more or less characteristic of AI image generators,” writes SiliconANGLE, adding that “from the example images Microsoft has provided, it seems that the effort has paid off, for it’s capable of generating much more natural lighting and realistic-looking landscapes compared to other models.”

In its announcement, Microsoft says MAI-Image-1 especially shines “when compared to many larger, slower models,” combining speed and quality so “users can get their ideas on screen faster, iterate through them quickly, and then transfer their work to other tools to continue refining.”

Digital Trends calls it “a real first-party swing in image generation from Microsoft, not a wrapper on someone else’s tech,” emphasizing that “owning the stack gives Microsoft tighter control over safety, quality, and integration.”

SiliconANGLE says “the release underscores Microsoft’s determination to establish its own credentials as a top-tier AI model maker, accelerating its break from OpenAI, which it previously relied on.”

As one of OpenAI’s earliest financial backers, and its largest, the term “ROI” is surely informing Microsoft’s current repositioning. While “Microsoft no longer has exclusive early access to OpenAI’s GPT models,” per SiliconANGLE, the Redmond-based software giant has found a growth opportunity in the new arrangement, powering some of the AI features in its flagship Microsoft 365 suite and Azure foundry with models from Anthropic, Mistral, DeepSeek and others.

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