Microsoft’s new image model passes Google and Meta on Arena
Microsoft just launched MAI-Image-2.6, debuting at number two on the Arena text-to-image leaderboard ahead of models from Google, Meta, and xAI. The new release gains +79 Elo overall over MAI-Image-2.5, with text rendering alone jumping by +91 Elo alongside noticeably cleaner portraits and commercial graphics. It puts Microsoft firmly in the top tier of frontier image generation.