If this sounds familiar, don't worry: I can understand the confusion. Recently we talked about Firefly, Adobe's AI-powered image generator... but the truth is that that wasn't the only novelty. With a fairly extensive post on the official Bing blog, Microsoft introduced the new Bing Image Creator that uses an advanced version of the DALL-E model. All you need is a compatible account, and a prompt for your image...
Microsoft's product regressions and internal policy horrors are well documented, but we must recognize that its reaction to the new algorithmic wave has been correct. With a million-dollar investment in OpenAI, the Redmond giant got access to its technology and transformed (not to say 'revitalized') the Bing search engine. In fact, I admit that we are using Bing like never before, and it's all because of the possibility of having a conversation with its brand new chatbot.
However, the story doesn't end there. The 'other' jewel in OpenAI's crown is DALL-E, one of the main image generation models. In general, the feeling is that DALL-E has stayed one or two steps below Stable Diffusion and Midjourney when it comes to quality, but all that could change with the debut of Bing Image Creator. What is this exactly? A more advanced and optimized version of DALL-E, merged with Bing.
How to Access Bing Image Creator, Microsoft's Image Generator
For now, there are two options: You can use Bing Chat's 'creative mode' and request images in the middle of a conversation, or go to bing.com/create to take advantage of its dedicated interface. In theory, using the Edge browser is mandatory, but with the help of the Bing Chat for All Browsers extension, the generator should work on Chromium and Firefox without incidents (all my tests were done with Ungoogled Chromium, and there were no errors).
The rest is a matter of entering a prompt, or using the 'Surprise me' option. The 'Explore ideas' section is also useful for getting additional prompts, but there's a technical detail here: they must be written in English. Microsoft said support for additional languages is on the way, though we don't see it as a major restriction.
Bing Image Creator uses a token system that speeds up image generation. Each token produces four images, and once it reaches zero we can keep generating, but the wait will be longer. Another limitation is that prompts don't support advanced commands like weights or negative elements, but some of the results will definitely surprise you.
Finally, the answer is no: you cannot generate NSFW images or anything like that. Bing Image Creator's filters seem to be working well, and at the first 'delicate' word in the prompt, the model blocks its process and shows a warning to the user (this does not happen with artist names). All generated images will be saved in the 'Creations' section, and they download at a resolution of 1,024 x 1,024 pixels, but the compression tends to be very aggressive. I hope Bing Image Creator lets us adjust that in the future.
Official announcement: Click here
Access Bing Image Creator: Click here
