Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.5 pulls even with Google's Nano Banana 2 on benchmarks

Microsoft released MAI-Image-2.5, an update to its image generation model that now ranks third on Arena's text-to-image leaderboard, tying with Google's Nano Banana 2. The model delivers significant improvements in text rendering, stylized illustrations, and commercial visuals, with more accurate prompt following and consistent lighting. Microsoft is positioning the model for professional use cases such as product photography and brand design, with availability on Arena now and a rollout to the MAI Playground and Foundry within two weeks.

Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.5 pulls even with Google's Nano Banana 2 on benchmarks Microsoft shipped an update to its MAI image model. MAI-Image-2.5 currently sits at number three on Arena's text-to-image leaderboard https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text-to-image , according to the MAI team. That puts it on par with Google's Nano Banana 2 https://the-decoder.com/google-explains-the-differences-between-its-three-nano-banana-image-generation-models/ , though still a clear step behind OpenAI's Image-2 https://the-decoder.com/openais-chatgpt-images-2-0-thinks-before-it-generates-adding-reasoning-and-web-search-to-image-creation/ . Microsoft https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-5-launches-at-no-3-on-arena-ai/ calls it the strongest MAI image model yet, with major gains over MAI-Image-2 https://the-decoder.com/microsofts-superintelligence-team-ships-mai-image-2-a-text-to-image-generator/ in text rendering, stylized illustrations, and commercial visuals. It's also said to follow prompts more closely and produce more consistent lighting, depth, and spatial relationships. Microsoft is pitching it for professional use cases like product photography and brand design. MAI-Image-2.5 is available now on Arena https://arena.ai/image and should roll out to the MAI Playground and Foundry https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-5-launches-at-no-3-on-arena-ai/ within two weeks. AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now Source: