Microsoft Designer integrates with Edge for AI-generated social content

Microsoft is rolling out a host of new features for Microsoft Designer, its AI-powered graphic design tool, to simplify how users design social media posts. The platform will soon be accessible directly through the Edge web browser and has additional AI-powered creative tools to help it compete with competing graphic design services like Canva.

Microsoft Designer was first unveiled in October last year and includes AI features for converting text into an image similar to tools like Stable Diffusion. Users can create images using text prompts, and incorporate the results into projects such as invitations, greeting cards, and social media posts. Think of it as a combination of DALL-E and Adobe Express, albeit with significant limitations.

Now, Microsoft is rolling out a version of the Designer app for the Edge web browser. Designer in Edge is built natively into the browser’s sidebar so users can start working on a new project and publish it to platforms like Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest without switching to a different window. It requires no downloadable plugins and will make suggestions to include in your post as you work.

Starting today, Microsoft Designer can now also generate text using AI. Users can select a goal from the drop-down menu to form the corner of the copy (such as “raise awareness” or “increase sales or bookings”) and write a quick description of what they need. The app then posts a selection of hashtags and captions for use in social media posts, and even recommends fonts that would go well with the project.

Microsoft has also made design sizing easy, offering up to 20 different social media layout sizes across Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Elements such as text and images will automatically change to accommodate the new formats, reducing the need to fix any formatting issues.

Animation features were also introduced to give final designs a nice touch, allowing users to automatically apply text transitions and animated backgrounds. Microsoft vaguely says the feature uses artificial intelligence but doesn’t say if the platform creates animated assets from scratch, which could mean users have to supply their own. We’ve reached out to the company for clarification and will update this story if we hear back.

There are also some future updates “coming soon” that will further expand Designer’s AI-powered features. The new Fill tool will allow users to select an area of ​​a design and quickly place an object in that location, while brushing over a person or object with the Erase tool will remove it and create another image to replace it. Expanding Background will fill in any gaps in the front of your design, and Replace Background will swap it out with a completely new background. Microsoft hasn’t provided a demo to show how these features actually work, so it’s unclear what role AI plays. The tech giant has carefully avoided saying that any of these features will generate images from scratch.

Microsoft Designer is currently in preview and doesn’t have a full release date yet. But the queue has been removed, so now anyone can access it and see how it stacks up against competitors like Canva and Adobe Express. As it stands, Microsoft has some catching up to do. Both Canva and Adobe have released their own set of AI-powered features in recent weeks to make graphic design more accessible to novice users.