MAI-Image-2.6 Reaches No. 2 on Arena (4 minute read)

# MAI-Image-2.6 launches at No. 2 on Arena ahead of Google, Meta and xAI | Microsoft AI Source: [https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai/](https://microsoft.ai/news/mai-image-2-6-launches-at-no-2-on-arena-ahead-of-google-meta-and-xai/) Models  Today, we’re announcing MAI\-Image\-2\.6 – ranked second on the[Arena text\-to\-image leaderboard\.](https://arena.ai/leaderboard/text-to-image) It’s another significant climb for the MAI\-Image family, improving \+79 Elo over MAI\-Image\-2\.5 overall, with gains across every Arena text\-to\-image category\. Text rendering alone improves by \+91 Elo\. This result firmly establishes MAI\-Image ahead of leading models from Meta, Google and xAI\. ## **Another step up in quality** With every MAI\-Image release, we’re focused on moving the quality frontier forward\. MAI\-Image\-1 gave us the foundation\. MAI\-Image\-2 made a major jump in photorealism, text and creative range\. MAI\-Image\-2\.5 pushed further into professional\-grade imagery and editing\. MAI\-Image\-2\.6 continues that climb with broad gains across different categories that we know our users care about most: - Stronger text rendering - Better portraits and 3D imagery - More polished commercial and photorealistic outputs, with stronger results across product, branding and cinematic use cases In the Arena evaluations, MAI\-Image\-2\.6 significantly improves on 2\.5 in every measured category\. And there’s more to 2\.6 – from working across multiple references and richer grounding to greater control over reasoning, format and resolution\. We’ll share more on that soon\. ## **More to come** MAI\-Image\-2\.6 is another step in building our hill\-climbing machine for image generation: continuously improving quality, expanding capability, and turning those gains into models that are more useful for real creative work\. **Try MAI\-Image\-2\.6 for text\-to\-image today on[**Arena\.**](https://arena.ai/image/direct)**Coming later this week to MAI Playground, and rolling out soon across Microsoft Foundry and other products\.**** ## Build the Future With Us We’re a lean, talent\-dense team of explorers, researchers, and full\-stack engineers\. We move fast, sweat the details, and operate at frontier scale with a roadmap to build the world’s most powerful AI models\. Most importantly, we’re united by the belief that doing this right is the only way to do it at all\. If our mission resonates with you, we’d love to talk\. [Explore all jobs](https://microsoft.ai/careers) ## Related Stories