Unless you’re a creative professional or social media marketer, chances are that you’ve never found much use for AI image generators. That’s especially true when the likes of Midjourney and DALL-E cost a minimum of $10 per month with no free trial on offer. Luckily, Microsoft has inexplicably bucked that trend since last year, offering free use of DALL-E via its Designer app (once known as Bing Image Creator). But you might be surprised to learn that Microsoft Designer has since morphed from a simple AI image generator to a rather capable graphic design tool today.
Microsoft Designer exited beta last week and landed on mobile, which prompted me to try it out for the first time in months. Upon launching the app, I was surprised to learn that Designer has almost shelved its AI image generation capabilities in favor of more useful, everyday applications. Some examples include designing invitations and postcards, avatars for chat apps, social media posts, or even unique coloring pages. The app also offers one-click templates for these scenarios that you can edit later. 