Apps

Microsoft’s AI-powered, Canva-like Designer app lands on iOS and Android

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Microsoft Designer displayed on laptop and mobile screens
Image Credits: Microsoft

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that its AI-powered Designer app is officially coming out of preview and is now available to all users on iOS and Android. The Canva-like app lets people generate images and designs with text prompts to create things like stickers, greeting cards, invitations, collages and more.

Designer is now accessible in more than 80 languages on the web, available as a free mobile app and as an app in Windows.  

The app features “prompt templates” that are designed to help jumpstart the creative process. The templates include styles and descriptions that you can experiment with and customize, and you can share templates with others in order to build on each other’s ideas.

In addition to stickers, you can create emojis, clip art, wallpapers, monograms, avatars and more with text prompts.

You can also use Designer to edit and restyle images with AI. For instance, you can upload a selfie and then choose from a set of styles and write in any extra details you want to see to transform your photo.

Image Credits: Microsoft

Soon, Designer will include a “replace background” feature that will allow you to use text prompts to transform images.

With the launch of the standalone Designer app, Microsoft shared that it’s bringing the service to apps like Word and PowerPoint through Copilot. People who have a Copilot Pro subscription can create images and designs in their workflow. Soon, users will get the option to create a banner for their document in Word based on the content of their document.

As part of Wednesday’s announcement, Microsoft revealed that Microsoft Photos on Windows 11 is getting a deeper integration with Designer. Users can now use AI to edit photos without leaving the Photos app. You can now do things like erase objects, remove backgrounds and auto-crop images directly within the app.

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