Microsoft nixes its Dall-E upgrade after image quality complaints

Microsoft had to roll back the latest update to its Bing Image Generation a system that has the latest version of OpenAI installed Model Dall-Edubbed PR16, after Bing users loudly complained about reduced image quality.

Since Bing Image Creator launched last spring, users have created billions of images with text prompts. I’m excited to share our latest updates that will enhance your creative experience. Starting today, we are releasing our newest model, DALL-E 3 PR16, which will create images… pic.twitter.com/3p9HsYMlr6

— Jordi Ribas (@JordiRib1) December 18, 2024

When Microsoft first announced the update late last year, the company promised that the new model would be “twice as fast as before and with higher quality.” The company’s head of search, Jordi Ribas, claims that Microsoft’s internal benchmark tests determined that the quality of images created with the PR16 is “slightly better on average” than the previous Dall-E PR13. This is not what users saw. One commentator on the Bing subreddit complained: “DALLE [sic] we loved, gone forever” because the two images below are apparently different enough to cause such outrage? Looks scary.

In response to the outcry, Ribas announced on Tuesday that the company would roll back Bing’s core image creation model to a previous version until quality issues with PR16 can be resolved. However, this may take a couple of weeks.

“We were able [reproduce] some issues have been reported and we plan to go back to PR13 until we can fix them,” Ribas. wrote in a post on X. “Unfortunately, the rollout process is very slow. This started over a week ago and will take another 2-3 weeks to reach 100%.”

Microsoft and OpenAI are not alone in their problems with image generators. In February 2024 Google had to temporarily disable the Gemini image model after he began bringing back racially offensive images of people of color, such as black Nazis.