How to Use Image Creator From Microsoft Designer (Formerly Bing Image Creator)

Microsoft Designer, which used to be called Bing Image Creator, is a free AI-powered web-based image editing app that you can use to create and edit pictures. This article explores the process for how to make AI images with the Image Creator tool found in Microsoft Designer and covers some tips and tricks for writing the perfect AI image text prompt.

How to Make AI Images With Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Designer runs completely in your browser; you don't have to download an app to use it. Here's how to get started making images.

1. Open the Microsoft Designer website in a browser of your choice.

   

2. Click Sign in to log into your Microsoft account.
   

   You need to log in to use the image creation tool.

   

3. Click the text field to expand it.

   

4. Enter your AI image creation prompt in the form of descriptive keywords and phrases separated by commas. For this example, we’ll use “A happy male yoga instructor, New York cafe, art deco design.”

   You don’t need to type “Create an image” or “Make a photo.”

   

5. Select Generate.

   

6. Two generated images will appear. To make some adjustments, add or remove phrases from the text prompt and click Generate again. Here, we’ll add “night time” to the prompt to change the time of day in the image and its overall aesthetic.

   

7. When you have an image you like, click it.

   

8. Select Download to save a 1024x1024 JPEG version of the image to your device, or Copy to copy the image to your device’s clipboard.
   

   Once copied, you can paste the image into another app.

   

9. If you select Create design, a new browser tab will open with Microsoft Designer’s web-based tools for turning the AI image into a social media graphic for platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest.

   

10. If you select Edit image, a new tab will open with Microsoft Designer’s image editing tools. From here you can crop, add text, rotate, and add filters to your AI image.

    

How to Write AI Art Prompts in Microsoft Designer

To write an AI art prompt in Microsoft Designer’s Image Creator, all you need to do is type a variety of keywords or phrases in the text field and separate them all by commas. The format will usually be something like “adjective + noun, verb, location or background, art style” but the keyword order doesn’t matter too much.

Here are some examples of prompts you may want to use:

• Adjective: Cute, fun, scary, mean, large, monstrous, lovely, angry, happy, villainous, heroic, hot, cold.
• Noun: Man, woman, girl, boy, dog, coffee, tree, athlete, officer, ninja, superhero, cartoon character.
• Verb: Running, sitting, flying, eating, dancing, relaxing, meditating, singing, walking, time-travelling.
• Location/background: Colorful background, black background, New York City, café, in space, in a dark room.
• Art style: Oil painting, marble statue, HD photo, studio lighting, polaroid photo, art deco print, retro.
  

Adding Years and Decades to AI Art Prompts

Something else you may want to play around with in your AI prompts is adding specific years or decades.

For example, both of the above images were generated using the prompt “a young girl playing with a fairy, flower meadow, daytime," but the left image's prompt includes the year "1930," and the right one's has "2024."

Adding a year is a quick way to mix up the general style, color palette, and look of the images that come out.

Is Image Creator From Designer Free?

Microsoft Designer, including its AI-powered Image Creator tool, is completely free to use while it’s in its testing period. Whenever Microsoft ends the testing phase and launches it commercially, you'll need a paid Microsoft 365 subscription to access some of its features.

Is There a Waitlist To Use Image Creator From Designer?

Image Creator and the Microsoft Designer tool as a whole is open to everyone and doesn't need any kind of application process or waitlist to access. Anyone with internet access and a web browser can use Microsoft Designer.

Using Designer in Bing’s AI Copilot

Microsoft’s AI-powered Copilot digital assistant features Microsoft Designer integration that lets you create AI artwork directly within its chatbot interface. You can ask Copilot to create an image for you and then request that it make adjustments instead of starting from scratch with each redo as with Microsoft Designer.

Copilot also generates four AI images per prompt as opposed to Designer’s two. You can use Copilot in Google Chrome or any other popular web browser on a Windows or Mac computer, tablet, or smartphone. You can also use access this functionality within the Bing and Copilot apps.

Who Owns AI Generated Images?

It’s still relatively early days for AI-created images, and numerous ongoing discussions and cases are happening at various levels of industry and government in regards to their legality. The situation is also likely to change several times before everyone agrees to settle on who can and can’t use AI-generated media on a commercial or even personal basis.

A late-2023 ruling stated that aspects of artwork created by AI aren’t eligible for copyright protection. This ruling means that if you use an AI tool to generate a digital painting, you don't own it, and there’s little stopping anyone else from also using the image you created.

The use of copyrighted artwork used in the training of AI tools is also proving to be controversial and could retroactively cause issues for existing AI artwork that have already been created. One bill introduced in early-2024 is attempting to tackle this prickly issue.