News Summary:
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Microsoft’s Bing Chat has been consistently popping up in the headlines for the past two weeks. The most recent development is the addition of Bing Image Creator in chat, allowing users to request images while chatting with the chatbot. Instead of asking for a simple prompt, the chatbot now allows users to edit images by requesting an edit. This new system adds an extra layer of complexity to the writing and editing process.
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With the integration of Bing’s AI-based chat and Microsoft’s image generator, it’s much easier for AI to draw unique and complex images thanks to its conversational nature. However, users looking to create tons of images will soon notice that Microsoft limits the speed of image processing beyond a certain threshold, forcing you to earn “acceleration” to create images faster in the future.
If you’re new to Bing Image Builder, you’ll find the process effortless. Just ask Bing to draw something for you and it will work, producing an image in about 10 seconds or less. What you may not have noticed is that for speedy frame processing, you’re using “Boosts”, a game-like reward mechanism that Microsoft implemented to limit server downtime.
While this is a bit annoying, since Microsoft has integrated Visualizer with Bing chat as a simple and seamless experience, it means that the company wants to limit the resources used per user. . Bing Image Creator uses an advanced DALL-E model with OpenAI, which certainly doesn’t come cheap. Comparatively, DALL-E 2 is free but uses the same credit system exchanged for image processing. With this advanced model and very fast processing speed, Microsoft can try to increase the number of uses.
Looks like every Microsoft user in Bing chat starts with 25 image creator enhancements. When they are used when creating images, image processing times increase dramatically, sometimes taking up to five minutes for a set of four images. Users can further redeem the Bing Image Creator boost by redeeming Microsoft’s rewards in a somewhat convoluted process – you can earn these rewards by doing things in Microsoft Edge.
Microsoft will add Bing Visualizer boosts on a “weekly basis” instead of giving users a set amount and expecting them to redeem more. It’s unclear how many speedups are given each week, but it’s definitely one of two evils.
