Microsoft launches cost-optimized MAI-Image-2-Efficient AI model at 41% lower price

Microsoft has released MAI-Image-2-Efficient, a faster and cheaper variant of its flagship text-to-image model that the company says delivers production-ready quality at nearly half the cost of the original. The new model is priced at $5 per million text input tokens and $19.50 per million image output tokens, representing a roughly 41% reduction from MAI-Image-2's pricing. Available immediately in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground with no waitlist, the model runs 22% faster than its predecessor and achieves 4x greater throughput efficiency per GPU, according to benchmarks conducted on NVIDIA H100 hardware at 1024×1024 resolution. Microsoft claims it outperforms competing hyperscaler models from Google by an average of 40% on p50 latency benchmarks. The company is positioning the two models as complementary tools rather than replacements, with MAI-Image-2-Efficient targeting high-volume, cost-sensitive production workloads like product photography, marketing creative, and UI mockups, while MAI-Image-2 remains the precision instrument for complex stylization and photorealistic fidelity. The release follows MAI-Image-2's debut on March 19 and broader availability through Microsoft Foundry on April 2, marking a rapid development cadence for Microsoft's in-house AI superintelligence team led by Mustafa Suleyman. The model is also rolling out across Copilot and Bing, with additional product surfaces to follow. Microsoft's tiered pricing strategy for image generation mirrors approaches seen elsewhere in the AI industry but focuses specifically on optimizing cost-per-image economics for enterprise-scale deployment. The faster, cheaper model addresses architectural requirements for agentic AI systems that may need to generate images programmatically as part of larger workflows.