Microsoft Designer's Generative Fill removed a person from a group photo and I cannot believe how well it worked

Practical story from someone who works in school administration and does not have a design background.

We had a professional group photo taken for our school's annual report. One staff member left the school before the report went to print and needed to be removed from the photo. In the old world that would have meant hiring a graphic designer or doing something awkward with cropping. I tried Microsoft Designer's Generative Fill.

You select the area you want to remove, tell the AI what to fill it with, and it generates a replacement that matches the surrounding image. In a group photo that means filling the removed person's position with background that looks like it was always there. The result was not perfect but it was good enough that nobody who was not told would notice.

That was not the use case I had originally tried Microsoft Designer for. I had been using it for social media graphics and event posters through the template and generative AI design features. But the image editing tools, the background removal, the object erasure, the Generative Fill, are now the features I reach for most often because they solve real problems that come up in school communications work.

The Social Media Optimization that suggests correct sizing for Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook automatically is what I use for parent communications. One design, multiple formats, no manual resizing.

Brand Kit integration keeps everything aligned with the school's colors and fonts without me applying them manually each time. The Microsoft 365 integration means everything stays in the ecosystem my organization already uses.