Microsoft releases MAI-Image-2.6 and Flash
MAI-Image-2.6 is Microsoft's strongest image model so far, now available to developers in Microsoft Foundry. A Flash variant targets fast, high-throughput production work.
What it does
MAI-Image-2.6 is Microsoft's strongest image model, and MAI-Image-2.6-Flash is a faster variant for high-throughput work. Both support editing with multiple reference images (combining people, products, styles and scenes), web grounding for up-to-date information, and dynamic aspect ratios up to 1.5K resolution.
Results and limits
As of September 4, 2026, Microsoft says it ranked No. 2 for text-to-image and image editing on Arena, and No. 2 for text-to-image and No. 1 for editing on Artificial Analysis. Microsoft says Flash generates 2.8x faster than GPT-Image-2-Medium.
Worth knowing
Try both in MAI Playground; developers can build with them in Public Preview through Microsoft Foundry. Resolution tops out at 1.5K.
Try it yourself
Upload [actor photo] and [costume reference]. Prompt: "Put the person from image 1 in the costume from image 2, standing in [location], [lighting], wide aspect ratio."