Microsoft Designer expands preview with new AI design features

Creativity is more important to individuals than ever before. This reflects a trend that has added more than 165 million creators to the global creator economy in just the last three years.¹ As a result, people demand tools that help them to be both productive and creative. Microsoft 365 strives to empower individuals to achieve great things by constantly evolving our products to meet their changing needs. We continue to demonstrate this commitment with new tools that help unleash creativity and imagination by enabling any type of digital ideation and creation—no professional skills required. Today, we’re excited to announce we’re removing the waitlist and adding an expanded set of features to the Microsoft Designer preview. With new AI technology at the core, Microsoft Designer simplifies the creative journey by helping you get started quickly, augment creative workflows, and overcome creative roadblocks.  

From ideation to creation, Microsoft Designer is built to assist you at each stage of the creative process. As we originally announced in October 2022, Microsoft Designer can help quickly create stunning visuals, social media posts, invitations, and more using cutting-edge generative AI technology. Since October, the AI models have steadily improved, and we’ve worked to weave these powerful capabilities throughout the Designer canvas in even more delightful ways while keeping you in control. Moreover, for those moments of inspiration that strike while browsing the web, Designer is one click away within the Microsoft Edge sidebar. The seamless integration of Designer in Edge marks the first step in this journey. We’re excited for future integrations to come.

Spark new ideas and unleash creativity in less time with Microsoft Designer

Designer leverages cutting-edge generative AI technology to assist and empower every person to get started on new ideas, create unique and high-quality graphics in less time, and uplevel content, with or without a background in design.

Here’s what you can do today

Get started with your ideas in Designer by simply describing what you want. Powered by generative AI technology, get one-of-a-kind images, including accompanying text and visuals, and design suggestions to meet your needs.

Writing text to accompany your designs has never been easier. Simply type a phrase that captures your thoughts and quickly get copy suggestions—from headlines to short texts—with font suggestions that pair with your design. Need help creating clever captions or hashtags? Now, Designer can help you instantly generate written captions and hashtags that are more relevant for social media posts. Leveraging generative AI, the tool now offers suggestions you can choose from to assist in crafting the perfect captions and witty hashtags that align with your design.

Based on customer feedback, we also made updates in the app to help customize and resize designs more easily. This new feature enables you to change the original design canvas size to a different size while automatically shifting the elements of the design to seamlessly fit. Resize your posts to up to 20 different social media layout sizes across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

To help your designs stand out, you can now create animated visuals in Designer. Adding a pop of motion helps you bring your creations to life instantly with animated backgrounds, engaging emotions, and text with transitions applied automatically with the help of AI technology.

Visit our Designer website to try the updated version of the Designer app in preview for free and have first access to additional features coming soon.²

Stay in your creative workflow with Designer in Edge

Designer was built with you in mind. You can use the app to spark creativity, refine and customize designs, and create high-quality content in less time using the latest DALL∙E and generative AI. With Designer in Edge, we are bringing these capabilities into the web browser, too. It’s built natively into the Edge sidebar and can be accessed by clicking on the Designer icon, making Edge the first and only browser with an integrated, AI-powered graphic design app. You can create unique designs instantly by simply describing the graphic you want. You don’t need to leave the page you’re on, switch windows, or download an extension to your browser to start working on an idea when creativity strikes. With Designer in Edge, you can also create high-quality, unique content without interrupting your workflow. As you’re drafting a post on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, Designer in Edge will provide AI-powered design suggestions to include in your post, which you can customize and publish without ever leaving your browser window.

Coming soon to Microsoft Designer

Refining a design is an important step in fully actualizing an idea. Fill, Expand background, Erase, and Replace background are new features coming soon to Designer.

• If you have a graphic that needs something specifically in the corner, use Fill by circling the spot and placing the object you want there in a flash and with the help of AI.
• Do you feel like there could be more to your picture? Expand background leverages AI to help you automatically fill in the rest of the picture and offer a more compelling landscape that frames your image.
• If there’s an object or person you didn’t intend to be in a graphic, use Erase by simply brushing over the object to remove it and automatically get another image generated to replace the space.

• Rather be at the beach than in your home office? Use Replace background to quickly remove your current background and replace it with another that you desire.

We will continue to evolve and add value to the Designer experience while maintaining our high security and privacy standards.

Looking ahead

At Microsoft, we’re committed to harnessing the power of innovative technology to expand what’s possible for all. You can try the Microsoft Designer expanded public preview for free by visiting our website or logging into your Microsoft account.² The preview of Designer in Edge is rolling out to Edge and can be accessed through the sidebar by clicking the “+” icon to enable it.

---

¹Adobe “Future of Creativity” Study: 165M+ Creators Joined Creator Economy Since 2020, Adobe. August 25, 2022.

²The current free preview does not include all planned features to come; we will be adding more over time. Once the app is ready for general availability, it will be available both as a free app and with more premium features available to Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers.