Microsoft Replaces OpenAI Image Models With Its Own Tech It Claims Is 85% Cheaper – Channelnews

Satya Nadella says Microsoft’s MAI AI models outperform frontier AI in many use cases, cut costs

Microsoft says its specialised MAI AI models can outperform general-purpose frontier AI models for specific tasks, while using fewer computing resources.

Microsoft Replaces OpenAI Image Models With Its Own Tech It Claims Is 85% Cheaper – channelnews

Microsoft is replacing OpenAI’s image-generation technology with its own AI models across products including PowerPoint, Bing and OneDrive, as it moves to cut the enormous cost of running AI services. Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman (pictured below) said the company’s in-house models were faster, cheaper and capable of producing higher-quality results while improving user retention. The company claims its Microsoft AI (MAI) image models are about 85% cheaper to operate in PowerPoint than comparable OpenAI technology. Bing Image Creator is now powered entirely by Microsoft’s MAI-Image-2.5 model, while the technology has also been deployed for image-to-image features in PowerPoint. Microsoft said the change had reduced PowerPoint GPU costs by up to 84% compared with OpenAI’s GPT-Image-2. MAI-Image-2.5 has also become the default model for several image-editing features in OneDrive, where Microsoft reported faster performance, improved efficiency and a higher proportion of users saving generated images. The shift also comes as Microsoft steadily reduces its dependence on OpenAI following years of tension between the companies. Microsoft has invested about US$13 billion (A$18.2 billion) in OpenAI, but the partnership has become less exclusive. OpenAI has expanded its use of rival cloud providers, while Microsoft has begun deploying its own MAI models and offering Anthropic’s Claude across parts of its product portfolio. Microsoft still receives access to OpenAI models under the partnership, but must supply the expensive computing infrastructure needed to operate them. The company has also begun replacing OpenAI and Anthropic models in other applications, claiming an MAI model used for common Excel tasks can match the performance of GPT-5.6 at a lower cost. Microsoft said its in-house models were now operating in more than half of its products and were being tested across its entire portfolio. Its new MAI-Voice-2-Flash speech model is also being used in Dynamics 365 Contact Center and Azure, including by customers such as T-Mobile and easyJet.

Microsoft launches new in-house AI models it says cut costs up to 89% versus OpenAI

Microsoft AI released two new in-house models into public preview on Wednesday — MAI-Image-2.5-Pro, its highest-fidelity image generator to date, and MAI-Voice-2-Flash, a speech model built for high-volume enterprise workloads — while publishing production data that amounts to the company's most aggressive argument yet that it can power its own products without leaning on OpenAI's frontier models.The announcement, made by Microsoft AI's Superint…

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shares MAI AI strategy, says new models will cut costs and power Copilot, Outlook, Excel

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella unveiled the MAI AI strategy, saying new AI models will lower costs, improve Copilot, Outlook, Excel and enterprise AI.

Microsoft Is Replacing OpenAI Image Models in PowerPoint, Bing

Microsoft Corp. is replacing OpenAI’s image-generating models with its own technology in popular products like PowerPoint and Bing.

‘We are now seeing MAI models outperform general-purpose frontier models’: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella touts in-house models to cut spiralling AI costs – and reduce growing reliance on frontier labs

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the company plans to expand use of its MAI model range as the company looks to offer customers lower-cost AI options. The in-house models, unveiled by the company in June, are designed for specific enterprise tasks and span a range of areas, including image and voice generation, audio transcription, and coding. In a blog post on 23 July, Nadella outlined the tech giant’s new ‘Frontier Diffusion and Control’ strat…