AI will soon take over the field of graphic design.
Microsoft has announced the release of Microsoft Designer, a new graphic design program that brings AI-generated graphics to the Microsoft Office suite.
The app operates similarly to AI text-to-picture models such as DALL-E and Stable Diffusion in that users write a text prompt that the program uses to produce an image.
Microsoft Designer, according to Microsoft’s blog post, can “instantly build” a range of “consistent, aligned, appropriately sized, and stunning designs whether with or without any natural design talent.”
The program is based on Microsoft’s PowerPoint and allows users to build presentations and designs from scratch using text prompts.
When users add additional information to their presentations, such as photographs or text, AI will provide them new “design ideas,” with multiple possibilities to pick from.
It will definitely surpass existing graphic design tools like Adobe Photoshop, Canva and VistaCreate.
The app is currently in beta testing and offers a free online preview version that does not yet include all of the intended features.
Signing up is easy. Just enter your email address at the homepage and join the waitlist for free. Microsoft will then email you the instructions to log in once they’ve given you access.
Microsoft also stated that once Microsoft Designer is complete, it will be accessible as a standalone free software as well as a more feature-rich version for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family users.
In addition to the release of Microsoft Designer, the company stated that it is integrating an AI text-to-image model to its search engine Bing.
While nothing is known about the capability, Microsoft promises that it would assist people in creating pictures that do not currently exist.
As an example, Microsoft stated that this capability might be beneficial when people search for photographs online yet, for whatever reason, are unable to discover what they are looking for.
To utilize this function, users just “simply enter in a description of anything, any extra context like location or activity, and an art style,” according to the blog post, and then “Image Creator will produce it for you.”