{"id":481424,"date":"2026-06-03T19:19:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T19:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481424\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T19:19:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T19:19:12","slug":"microsofts-new-ai-image-tool-beats-nano-banana-on-this-key-task","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/481424\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft&#8217;s New AI Image Tool Beats Nano Banana on This Key Task"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"u-speakableText-p1\">Microsoft is coming for the king of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/best-ai-image-generators\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">AI image generator<\/a> game, and on at least one metric, it didn&#8217;t miss. The company on Tuesday dropped two new text-to-image models, named MAI-Image-2.5, as part of a series of next-generation AI models. But how does it compare to the gold standard in image generation, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/google-nano-banana-2-launch-what-changed-news\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Google&#8217;s Nano Banana<\/a>?<\/p>\n<p class=\"u-speakableText-p2\">When you think about Microsoft and its AI offerings like Copilot, you probably don&#8217;t think about creative work. The capabilities of these two new models &#8212; the regular 2.5 and a quicker Flash one &#8212; are designed to change your mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Read more: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/news-live\/microsoft-build-2026-news-ai-copilot\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Microsoft Build: All the Biggest Copilot AI, Agent and Chip News From San Francisco<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They give you precise editing with incredible control and consistency,&#8221; Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said during the Build keynote Tuesday. &#8220;Flash is here for super-efficient production workloads, while 2.5 gives you that maximum fidelity and professional-grade performance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"Two images of a before and after, an orange tote with and without peonies in it\" height=\"593.8325991189428\" width=\"1200\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>   <\/p>\n<p>Precise editing of AI images is important for professional or enterprise work. This is an example Microsoft shared of how its new model can adjust images.<\/p>\n<p> Microsoft<\/p>\n<p>These are two of seven new AI models that Microsoft unveiled at its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/news-live\/microsoft-build-2026-news-ai-copilot\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Build developer conference<\/a> on Tuesday. It also released its first &#8220;reasoning&#8221; model, named MAI-Thinking-1. (A reasoning model is designed to spend more time and do more iterations on a response, ideally to generate a better one or solve a more complex question.) New generations of its voice and transcription models were also introduced, along with a coding model optimized to run on GitHub, which is also owned by Microsoft. We also got an in-depth look at how Microsoft sees the future of computing, and &#8212; spoiler &#8212; it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/microsoft-made-a-bing-for-ai-agents\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">all about agentic AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/ai-atlas\/\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"c-shortcodeImage_imageContainer\">  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\" alt=\"CNET AI Atlas badge; click to see more\" height=\"268.105702364395\" width=\"768\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>  <\/a> <\/p>\n<p>The new image model is available now in PowerPoint and in its enterprise marketplace, Foundry, and is rolling out now in OneDrive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This is how Microsoft&#8217;s newest\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/best-ai-image-generators\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"c-shortcodeLink c-shortcodeLink-active\" target=\"_blank\">AI image models<\/a>\u00a0stack up against the competition.<\/p>\n<p>Which is better, MAI-Image-2.5 or Nano Banana 2?<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to AI image work, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/nano-banana-2-how-much-of-an-improvement-is-googles-new-ai-image-model\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"c-shortcodeLink c-shortcodeLink-active\" target=\"_blank\">Google&#8217;s Nano Banana<\/a> has dominated the creative AI space since its 2025 launch. It&#8217;s for good reason &#8212; its capabilities are industry-leading, even as it powers\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/features\/ai-slop-is-destroying-the-internet-these-are-the-people-fighting-to-save-it\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"c-shortcodeLink c-shortcodeLink-active\" target=\"_blank\">a deluge of slop and deepfakes<\/a>. That&#8217;s why it was surprising to hear Microsoft announce that its new image model had beat out Nano Banana in one key way.<\/p>\n<p>Microsoft&#8217;s MAI-Image-2.5 is better at image editing than Nano Banana 2, according to benchmarking shown on the <a href=\"https:\/\/arena.ai\/leaderboard\/image-edit\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"(opens in a new window)\" class=\"c-regularLink\">Arena AI leaderboard<\/a>, a popular measuring stick for AI models. But Microsoft is only getting the silver medal &#8212; OpenAI&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnet.com\/tech\/services-and-software\/chatgpt-images-2-release-openai-news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"c-shortcodeLink c-shortcodeLink-active\" target=\"_blank\">GPT-Image-2<\/a> currently holds the top spot.<\/p>\n<p>The usefulness of an AI model isn&#8217;t solely defined by any one benchmark, however. Accessibility plays just as big a role. One simple question will determine which will be more useful for you: Do you use PowerPoint or Google Slides? That ease of access to Microsoft and Google&#8217;s respective AI models is going to influence which one you end up using. If you&#8217;re using your AI images for commercial use, you&#8217;ll want to make sure you have the rights, which may depend on whether you&#8217;re using the AI on an enterprise or individual plan.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft is coming for the king of the AI image generator game, and on at least one metric,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481425,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-481424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481424\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}