Microsoft has began testing AI-powered Notepad textual content rewriting and Paint picture era instruments 4 a long time after the 2 applications had been launched within the Nineteen Eighties.
These AI “experiences” (as the corporate describes them) are rolling out at present to Home windows 11 Insiders within the Canary and Dev Channels on Home windows 11, who’ve upgraded to Paint 11.2410.28.0 and Notepad 11.2410.15.0.
The brand new Paint instruments, generative fill and generative erase, complement the beforehand introduced Cocreator characteristic and permit customers to edit their pictures and change parts of their selection with AI-generated content material.
Redmond began rolling out Cocreator, powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E text-to-image mannequin, to Home windows Insiders in Dev and Canary channels in September 2023.
“With generative fill, you can also make edits and additions with just some phrases whereas sustaining the prevailing artwork type of your venture,” mentioned Home windows Inbox Apps group product supervisor Dave Grochocki.
“We’re additionally introducing generative erase, a brand new AI-powered instrument that helps you take away undesirable objects from the canvas, filling within the empty area left behind to make it appear like the article was by no means there.”
That is a part of a broader push to incorporate AI-powered options within the Paint picture editor, with the corporate additionally saying a new background remover instrument in Home windows 11 Insider builds that may assist take away picture backgrounds to get a cutout of the picture topic.
Notepad, Microsoft’s primary textual content modifying app launched in 1983, additionally will get an AI-powered characteristic dubbed “Rewrite” (beforehand generally known as CoWriter) that robotically rewrites content material utilizing generative AI.
“You possibly can rephrase sentences, modify the tone, and modify the size of your content material based mostly in your preferences to refine your textual content,” Grochocki added. “Choices to make your content material longer or shorter and modifying the tone or format allow you to simply modify your content material for particular objectives.”
Rewrite is obtainable in preview to Home windows 11 customers from the USA, France, the UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany. To make use of it, they should register with a Microsoft account.
After years of remaining unchanged, the corporate lastly began including new options to Home windows Notepad in 2018 to modernize it and assist it compete with extra common Notepad replacements like Notepad2 or Notepad++.
Microsoft added a built-in character counter to the Home windows 11 Notepad software in December 2023 and a spell test and autocorrect characteristic in July.
Different new options added since then embody wrap-around discover and change, enhanced Unix & Mac compatibility, tabs, textual content zoom, UTF-8 help, autosaving, and line quantity shows.