The AI sphere was rather quiet, before the internet was captivated by the abilities of generative AIs.
It was OpenAI that started all the hype, when it introduced ChatGPT. But let's not forget that OpenAI also has other products that came before it. One of the most notable, is DALL·E.
DALL·E is a neural network that can "take any text and make an image out of it," said Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist.
OpenAI picked the name "DALL·E" as a portmanteau of the surrealist artist Salvador Dali and the yellow Pixar robot WALL-E. With the naming, OpenAI wants to fulfill the dream of having a computer that can create something using regular languages.
Microsoft is amongst the main backers of OpenAI.
After embedding ChatGPT to power its Bing chatbot, this time, it's embedding DALL·E to the chatbot.
The result of this, is an even smarter, more capable chatbot.
According to Microsoft in a blog post:
"Powered by an advanced version of the DALL∙E model from our partners at OpenAI, Bing Image Creator allows you to create an image simply by using your own words to describe the picture you want to see."
"Now you can generate both written and visual content in one place, from within chat."
The tool does like it should.
It allows Bing users to create images, by simply typing what they want to generate.
According to the blog post:
"By typing in a description of an image, providing additional context like location or activity, and choosing an art style, Image Creator will generate an image from your own imagination."
"It’s like your creative copilot. Just type something like 'draw an image' or 'create an image' as a prompt in chat to get creating a visual for a newsletter to friends or as inspiration for redecorating your living room."
The tool takes the form of an Bing icon that appears in Microsoft Edge's sidebar. Interacting with the icon will allow users to create images in a text entry prompt.
Initially, Microsoft is limiting this image creator to only its Creative mode in Bing, and plans to optimize how it works in multi-turn chats.
"We will initially only include Image Creator in the creative mode of Bing chat and our intention is to make it available in balanced and precise mode over time,” the blog post continued.
At this time, Bing chatbot has three modes of responses: Creative, Balanced, and Precise.
The Creative mode allows the AI to include responses that are "original and imaginative," whereas the Precise mode favors accuracy and relevancy for more factual and concise answers.
Learning from its mistakes, Microsoft is being more careful with its image creation feature after Bing chatbot’s rude responses and the hallucinations it made during its initial launch.
This feature should make Bing a lot powerful, but many are concerned that Microsoft's fast move on bringing AI-powered text-to-image features to Bing could open the search engine up to generating bad images.
They have warned about text-to-image systems producing images that could be used for propaganda, harassment, misinformation, and more.
Microsoft said that it has precautions and protections against any misuse.
"We have ensured OpenAI’s safeguards, plus additional protections, have been incorporated into Image Creator," the blog post said.
"For example, we have put controls in place that aim to limit the generation of harmful or unsafe images. When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it blocks the prompt and warns the user."