Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.6-Flash hits #3 in image editing, jumping 34 Elo over last Flash

ArtificialAnlys · x · 2026-09-05

Artificial Analysis reports Microsoft's MAI-Image-2.6-Flash, released today on Microsoft Foundry, ranks #3 in image editing — behind only MAI-Image-2.6 and OpenAI's GPT Image 2 (high), narrowly ahead of Google's Nano Banana 2. At the same price as MAI-Image-2.5-Flash, it jumps 69 Elo in text-to-image (#16→#8) and 34 Elo in editing (#12→#3), and joins MAI-Image-2.6 on the quality-vs-price Pareto frontier. Both models handle text-to-image and image editing.

Related event: MAI-Image-2.6-Flash Hits Quality-Price Pareto Frontier at $19.5 per 1K Images(4 posts)→

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