Microsoft AI's first in-house image generator MAI-Image-1 is now available (www.theverge.com)

Microsoft has launched its first in-house text-to-image model, MAI-Image-1, and made it available in Bing Image Creator and Copilot Audio Expressions (with EU availability “coming soon,” per Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman). The model is already one of three selectable engines in Bing’s image creator alongside OpenAI’s DALL·E 3 and GPT‑4o, and it will generate visuals to accompany AI‑narrated stories in Copilot’s “story mode.” This release follows Microsoft’s earlier MAI family launches (MAI‑Voice‑1 and MAI‑1‑preview) and comes as Copilot also offers GPT‑5 and Anthropic’s Claude, indicating a hybrid strategy that mixes in‑house and third‑party models. Technically, Microsoft says MAI‑Image‑1 excels at photorealistic imagery—especially complex lighting effects (bounce light, reflections), landscapes, food and nature scenes—and delivers that quality at higher speed compared with “larger, slower” alternatives. That combination of fidelity and responsiveness is aimed at faster ideation and iteration, letting creators get concepts on screen quickly and move outputs into other tools for refinement. For the AI/ML community, this signals Microsoft’s push toward efficient, production‑grade generative models that reduce dependence on external providers, emphasize real‑world integration across products, and underscore ongoing tradeoffs between model size, latency, and visual quality.