Pantone, the global color authority and provider of digital solutions for the design community, and Microsoft Corp. are joining forces to guide creatives and designers into the future as they increasingly turn to artificial intelligence to amplify their craft. Pantone on Wednesday unveiled its beta version of the Pantone Palette Generator, a new tool built using Microsoft Azure OpenAI that brings Pantone’s expertise in color psychology and trend forecasting into an intelligent, interactive experience within Pantone Connect.
The Pantone Palette Generator is a chat-based interface integrated into Pantone Connect, Pantone’s digital platform for designers that streamlines their color decision-making and communication. The Palette Generator leverages decades of expertise and research from the color and trend experts at the Pantone Color Institute with advanced conversational AI technology to help users expedite the research and inspiration phase of design, by exploring color palettes, leveraging trend forecasting data and generating design concepts within Pantone Connect. With the Palette Generator, designers can create palettes drawing from thousands of colors from Pantone’s vast color library in seconds.
“For over 60 years, Pantone has empowered creatives to confidently make color-critical decisions throughout their design process,” said Sky Kelley, president, Pantone. “By collaborating with Microsoft, we wanted to create a tool that helps jumpstart the research, discovery and inspiration phase of the design process — allowing designers to integrate color and trend data efficiently as they bring their visions to life.”
Available today for Pantone Connect users, the Palette Generator delivers instant color palettes freshly built around a user’s instructions, while also surfacing the forecasting work used to inform the tool, enabling a fast, inspiration-driven workflow. Powered by Retrieval-Augmented Generation and agentic technology, the Palette Generator semantically searches Pantone’s Color Insider and trend forecasting articles to deliver palettes grounded in Pantone Color Institute insights. During the open beta phase, the Palette Generator is available to all Pantone Connect users, including those with free (basic) accounts.
“Pantone is showing the world what it means to lead with AI — transforming an industry long grounded in physical design,” said Kathleen Mitford, corporate vice president, Global Industry Marketing at Microsoft. “Together, we’re accelerating design workflows with Azure OpenAI and showcasing how AI can unlock new levels of creativity, productivity and innovation across every industry.”
Adding Pantone Color Institute insights to designers’ toolboxes with AI
The Palette Generator draws from a rich dataset curated by Pantone’s color scientists, psychologists and trend forecasters at the Pantone Color Institute, enabling users to prompt the assistant with questions like “What colors evoke optimism in Gen Z?” or “Show me palettes inspired by 1970s fashion editorials.” The assistant responds with suggested color palettes based on Pantone’s proprietary research and global trend insights.
Built on Microsoft technologies, including Azure AI Foundry, Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI and Azure Cosmos DB, the solution ensures scalability, security and seamless cross-platform integration while safeguarding content, supporting multilanguage use and laying a foundation for future innovation.
The Palette Generator currently supports Pantone’s Fashion, Home & Interiors library with plans to expand to its full library in the near future. User-generated palettes can be added directly to Pantone Connect and promptly analyzed, downloaded and shared for collaborative design workflows, saving hours of research while inspiring creative exploration.
Looking ahead, users will be able to leverage the Palette Generator to incorporate palettes around the upcoming Pantone Color of the Year 2026 and all past Pantone Colors of the Year.
Digital transformation for the future of the creative workflow
As Pantone continues to invest in its digital product suite, the company is focused on tools to enhance the future of the creative workflow. In addition to the new Palette Generator, Pantone has also added new features like Design Mode within the Adobe extension, improving navigation and reducing click paths based on user feedback.
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