Designers at Mattel, the toy company behind Hot Wheels, have found a new source of inspiration in artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Using DALL∙E 2, an AI system developed by OpenAI, designers can create custom images and art based on plain language descriptions. For example, a prompt like “A scale model of a classic car” can generate an image of a toy vintage car. Designers can then make specific requests, such as turning it into a convertible or changing the color. This AI technology is now being integrated into Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, allowing select Azure AI customers to benefit from its capabilities. For Mattel, DALL∙E 2 has been instrumental in generating numerous design ideas for new Hot Wheels model cars.
Carrie Buse, Director of Product Design at Mattel Future Lab, believes that the AI tool helps designers generate more ideas and ultimately improves the quality of their designs. Microsoft is also incorporating DALL∙E 2 into its consumer apps and services, starting with the Microsoft Designer app and later with Image Creator in Microsoft Bing. This move reflects Microsoft’s commitment to infuse AI into its products and services to enhance productivity and innovation.
DALL∙E 2 was trained on a supercomputer hosted in Azure and is part of Microsoft’s ongoing partnership with OpenAI. Azure’s powerful infrastructure enables AI tools like DALL∙E 2 to quickly generate image, text, or code suggestions for review and consideration. This integration strengthens the range of use cases within Azure OpenAI Service, which offers enterprise-grade capabilities in terms of security, reliability, compliance, and data privacy.
Microsoft’s AI capabilities are designed to automate tedious tasks and enable employees to focus on more valuable work. These tools can automate processes like creating summaries of sales calls or capturing action items, allowing people to be more productive. Additionally, Microsoft is working on empowering anyone with a computing device to create their own AI-powered applications using the Microsoft Power Platform. Low-code tools and graphical interfaces make it easier for users to customize and refine their applications.
The explosion of digital content in recent years has created a need to integrate AI technologies with this content to enable more structured activities, such as contract approvals and invoice management. Microsoft is actively working on integrating AI technologies like DALL∙E 2 into its content workflows to enhance productivity and streamline processes for its customers.