Microsoft AI’s first in-house image generator MAI-Image-1 is now available

Microsoft’s first in-house AI image generator, MAI-Image-1, is now available in two products, Bing Image Creator and Copilot Audio Expressions. The company announced the model in October. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman wrote in a post on X that the text-to-image model will be “coming soon” to the EU. Suleyman added that the model “really excels at” generating images of food and nature scenes, as well as artsy lighting and photorealistic detail. Microsoft has previously posted more details on its blog: “MAI-Image-1 excels at generating photorealistic imagery, like lighting (e.g., bounce light, reflections), landscapes, and much more. This is particularly so when compared to many larger, slower models. Its combination of speed and quality means users can get their ideas on screen faster, iterate through them quickly, and then transfer their work to other tools to continue refining.” Microsoft’s MAI-Image-1 will also create AI-generated art to accompany AI-generated audio stories in the “story mode” of Copilot’s text-to-speech platform, Copilot Audio Expressions. In August, Microsoft announced their first in-house AI models – the speech model MAI-Voice-1 and the text-based model MAI-1-preview. At the time, the company said it planned to use MAI-1-preview in its Copilot AI assistant in certain unspecified cases, a sign that Microsoft might be pivoting away from its reliance on OpenAI’s models. As of today, Microsoft says that its Copilot chatbot is transitioning to OpenAI’s latest model GPT-5, while also offering Anthropic’s Claude AI models as options to users. MAI-Image-1 is listed as one of the three AI models available on Bing’s image creator website and app. The other two models, DALL-E 3 and GPT-4o, are from OpenAI.