Microsoft tests Bing image creator icon in Edge Sidebar

Microsoft Edge has a Bing button in the right corner of the Edge browser to maximize your productivity when you browse the internet. Besides the new Bing button, Edge might also have another useful tool to help you quickly insert images into whatever you are editing. Microsoft is testing a Bing image creator icon in the Edge Sidebar.

The Sidebar in Edge is currently home to many apps and useful tools, including the Outlook app, Drop, Microsoft 365, and more. When you open anything from the Sidebar, it opens a small side panel on the right side, helping to get things done quickly without opening a separate tab to access the tool. The Bing image creator will also make its way to the Sidebar in the future version of Edge, as confirmed by Microsoft’s Mikhail Parakhin.

You can already tell Bing to create images, and the image generation capability has also improved in Bing Chat v98. But what Microsoft is currently testing is an independent icon for the image generation in Edge Sidebar. You will be a click away from accessing it, thus being able to generate images through the help of AI quickly. However, Parakhin also said that if the usage rate of the dedicated image creator icon is not high, Microsoft will “move it behind the plus sign.”

We are trying this new tool on Edge sidebar: Bing Image Creator. The thesis is: generate the image and insert it right into whatever you happen to be editing. We have a pretty high usage bar for the icons there, if engagement is not stellar, we'll move it behind the plus sign. pic.twitter.com/ATRzUjae9y

— Mikhail Parakhin (@MParakhin) April 5, 2023

Clearly, Microsoft is quite aggressive in pushing the new Bing to all its services. The software giant has recently started testing the new Bing on the SwiftKey Keyboard beta, making the chatbot even more accessible. It has also introduced AI capabilities to other apps and services, including Skype and GitHub.

However, Microsoft did not reveal when the Bing image creator would be available for the general public. It would be interesting to see whether it pushes the icon directly to Edge Stable users.