Microsoft Releases MAI-Image-2.7-Preview Image Editing Model, Ranked Second on AA Leaderboard
Microsoft has released the MAI-Image-2.7-Preview image editing model, which ranks second with 1,193 Elo on Artificial Analysis's AA-Image-Editing v2.1 leaderboard, behind only OpenAI's GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst (max). At this stage, the model only supports editing via an input original image plus text instructions; text-to-image generation is not yet available. Compared with MAI-Image-2.6, it improves on all 10 use cases and all 7 categories of editing actions. Users can try it on Arena, Artificial Analysis, and MAI Playground; the public API, pricing, and commercial availability date have not yet been announced.
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Microsoft's new preview model rises to second on the image editing leaderboard, with an item-by-item comparison against the previous generation and available access points.
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Microsoft MAI-Image-2.7-Preview Released, Image Editing AI Ranks Second Globally IT Home Download the App for Exclusive Early Access October 28, 2026, 10:37:17 From Shandong Updated October 28, 2026, 11:11:17
Original title: "The World's Second-Ranked Image Editing AI Model": Microsoft MAI-Image-2.7-Preview Debuts, Outperforming Google, Meta, and xAI
IT Home, October 28 — Microsoft yesterday (October 27) issued an announcement unveiling the MAI-Image-2.7-Preview model. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman proudly declared: "MAI-Image is now the world's second-ranked image editing model!"
In his tweet, Suleyman wrote that, based on the Artificial Analysis image editing leaderboard, Microsoft's MAI-Image series models have once again beaten Google, Meta, xAI, and GPT-Image-2.5-Flare to become the world's second-ranked image editing model, trailing only OpenAI's GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst (max). IT Home includes the relevant screenshot below:
It should be noted that at this stage, the MAI-Image-2.7-Preview model focuses on "input original image + text instruction → output edited image" and has not yet opened up text-to-image functionality; it is a controllable editing model for existing photos, design drafts, screenshots, or film and television material.
Microsoft emphasizes that it can handle tasks that are "hard to get right": overall style changes, relighting, modifying text/symbols in the image, restoring and enhancing material, and complex edits that require understanding the relationships among objects, light, and the environment.
Microsoft says that compared with the previous generation MAI-Image-2.6, MAI-Image-2.7 improves on all 10 test cases and 7 types of editing actions in the Artificial Analysis evaluation, and reaches the category frontier in four categories: enhancement and restoration, reasoning-based editing, scene style, and text and symbols.
Among these, the lead is largest in scene and style editing, where it is 24 Elo higher than the next-best model; on Artificial Analysis's AA-Image-Editing v2.1 leaderboard, it ranks 2nd with 1,193 Elo, trailing only OpenAI's GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst (max).
Users can currently try it on Arena, Artificial Analysis, and MAI Playground, and only image editing is currently available; Microsoft says text-to-image is "coming soon" but has not announced a date.
The model is still a Preview version at this stage, and Microsoft has not yet announced a public API, pricing, or an official commercial launch date; the model weights are also not open, so it cannot be self-hosted. Playground regional availability may also be limited.
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