Microsoft rolls back Bing Image Creator's Dall-E 3 upgrade after user backlash

Ahead of the holiday season, Microsoft announced that it was upgrading its Bing Image Creator tool to the latest version of OpenAI's DALL-E 3, PR16. The company promised that the updated model would allow users to create images "twice as fast as before" with "higher quality."

However, the upgrade soon became a PR nightmare for Microsoft, as complaints from frustrated users flooded social media platforms like X and Reddit. "The DALL-E we used to love is gone forever," complained one Redditor, while another wrote, "I'm using ChatGPT now because Bing has become useless for me."

Users have claimed that PR16 produces images that are not realistic and devoid of detail and polish, with pictures often appearing "weirdly cartoonish and lifeless."

The backlash was so severe that Microsoft had to revert to the old DALL-E 3 PR13 model and keep it on until it cleans up the new PR16 version. According to Jordi Ribas, head of search at Microsoft, the company had been able to reproduce some of the issues that were being reported by users and, therefore, decided to roll back the upgrade.

Microsoft's own testing found the PR16 model to be "a bit better on average" compared to the previous version. Still, that assessment clearly did not align with the preferences of the majority of Bing Image Creator users, said Ribas.

It's worth noting that this isn't the first controversy an AI image model has found itself at the center of after a round of improvements. Earlier this year, Google had to pause its AI chatbot Gemini's ability to generate images of people after users complained about historical inaccuracies.