Bing Image Creator slowed to a crawl over the weekend due to DALL-E 3

What you need to know

• Multiple users took to social media platforms to report that Bing Image Creator took up to one hour to generate images.
• Microsoft recently integrated OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model into the image generation tool to help users generate engaging and clearer images, attracting more interest to the tool.
• As a result, this overwhelmed the tool's capabilities, causing it to take longer to generate images.
• The company has since acknowledged the issue and indicated it would bring more GPUs to mitigate it.
• The service seems to be working as usual now.

During Microsoft's underwhelming Surface and AI event, the company announced it would soon integrate a new iteration of OpenAI's DALL-E model into Bing Image Creator, DALL-E 3. The company added that it would bring a refreshed and improved user experience to the Bing Image Creator compared to its predecessor, ultimately allowing users to generate clearer and more engaging images. 

But it seems Microsoft bit off more than it could chew with this new addition. Multiple users took to social media platforms over the weekend to highlight their frustrations, indicating that Bing Image Creator was taking longer to generate images (some users indicated that it was taking up to two hours).

Microsoft's new Windows and Web Services lead, Mikhail Parakhin, quickly responded, acknowledging the issue, stating that the company had anticipated increased interest in the image generation tool but not to the extent experienced in the past couple of days. DALL-E 3 shipped to broad availability on September 19, 2023, which explains the spike in Bing Image Creator's user base. 

That said, Parakhin indicated that the company was working on a fix for the throttling Issues experienced by users while trying to generate images using the tool. He further added more GPUs would be integrated into the tool to mitigate the "high user interest."

When a concerned user on X asked how many GPUs the company would bring to the platform, Parakhin said it would be "measured in thousands of H100-equivalent" GPUs. Additionally, when asked how long it would take for the company to implement the change, Parakhin indicated that it would only be a matter of "hours."

Bing Image Creator is back up to speed

Per my own analysis and my colleagues, Bing Image Creator seems to work fine now. But there's a chance that delays are intermittent. Users should now be able to leverage the tool's capabilities and generate images within a short span of time. It seems bringing in more GPUs did the trick.

What's your experience with Bing ImageCreator so far? Let us know in the comments below.