Microsoft’s New AI Hub ‘Copilot’ is Powered by Dall-E 3

Microsoft announced its latest AI venture Thursday, focusing on simplifying features in one place: Microsoft Copilot.

Copilot, Microsoft says, will work with Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and in-browser with Edge and Bing as both an app and by right-click where relevant. Copilot launches on Windows 11 on Tuesday, September 26, as part of the free 22H2 update. Additional support will come to Microsoft 365, Edge, and Bing this fall. Microsoft 365 for enterprise users will get Copilot on November 1. Copilot, Microsoft says, will bring more than 150 new features to Windows 11, making the operating system’s next update its “most ambitious yet.”

Notably, it’s already got integration with OpenAI’s latest Dall-E 3 text-to-image generator, which was just announced Wednesday. This will work with Bing Image Creator and Designer, which is part of Microsoft 365. Designer will now let users expand an image’s borders, use generative fill to add details or change a background, and erase objects, similar to Photoshop’s capabilities. Dall-E 3 will reportedly improve image generation within Designer as well, adding “higher quality images to your design in seconds,” according to Microsoft. And Microsoft Designer will integrate directly into Bing and Word. For Word, Designer will analyze the context of the words to suggest images, and users can upload their own photos as well.

Paint, which just got a few upgrades of its own by adding layers and using AI to remove backgrounds, will have generative AI now, too. Paint is also gaining the ability to use Generative AI, again powered by Dall-E 3, in a feature Microsoft is calling Cocreator.

Photos gets background blurring and improved search, as users will be able to type in the location a photo was taken or describe the content to bring up what images they want. Clipchamp can also make automatic suggestions with the new update.

Along with the text-to-image generation upgrades, Paint and Designer get Content Credentials, which lets users make invisible digital watermarks for their AI-generated images. This seems similar to the Google’s SynthID feature announced last month. Content Credentials will show when an image was created, and Microsoft says, this will be for all AI-generated images in Bing. It seems this is not a setting users can opt in or out of, though Microsoft has not explicitly confirmed this detail.

Bing chat can also give personalized answers as it learns of information like a user’s favorite teams or upcoming travel destinations, though this feature can be turned off. And with Microsoft Shopping, users will be able to use images to search for items, similar to Amazon’s recent update. Bing can also ask additional questions to hone in on the exact type of item someone is looking for.

Image credits: Microsoft