Microsoft AI Announces New Model Variants, Minor Shift Away from OpenAI

Microsoft AI today announced two new variants of its in-house AI models and a minor shift away from OpenAI’s models: It’s using its new MAI-Image-2.5-Pro model in PowerPoint, Bing, OneDrive, and more.

“MAI-Image-2.5-Pro is a strong leap forward for GenMedia tools,” Microsoft global chief creative officer Rob Reilly writes. “Beyond the impressive image quality, its ability to render text with this kind of accuracy is a real breakthrough. It also understands natural language edits, so creative iteration becomes faster and far more intuitive. Microsoft has firmly established itself among the leaders in generative AI.”

With this update, Bing Image Creator is now 100 percent in-house and using MAI-Image-2.5-Pro “end-to-end” for high-quality generation and greater creative control. And Microsoft says that MAI-Image-2.5 is now in production in PowerPoint for image-to-image capabilities, reducing GPU costs up to 84 percent compared with GPT-Image-2.

MAI-Image-2.5 is also now the default model for some key OneDrive production image-editing scenarios. And MAI-Voice-2-Flash is used across Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Azure Voice Live.

“Each of these enhancements is a step toward the same goal,” Reilly says. “Microsoft products, powered by Microsoft models, built to serve the people who use them.”

You can learn more about MAI-Image-2.5-Pro and MAI-Voice-2-Flash on Microsoft Learn or try them out in Foundry and the MAI Playground.