Windows 11s Paint and Notepad apps are getting smart new AI features though one of the best will be for Copilot+ PCs only

Date:
Thu, 07 Nov 2024 13:04:04 +0000

Description:
Crave more AI in Windows 11? Paint and Notepad are getting updates with new
AI features to do more of the creative heavy lifting for you.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Notepad is getting a rewrite feature and generative fill is coming to Paint There are a fair few more AI abilities coming too, including generative erase One of
the most impressive, generative fill, will only come to Copilot+ PCs

Windows 11s Paint and Notepad stock apps have been worked on considerably in the recent past, and are getting some new AI features albeit theyre only in testing for now.

Microsoft tells us that updates for these apps have started to roll out to testers in the Canary and Dev channels (which are the two earliest test channels).

Lets start with Notepad which is getting a new Rewrite ability. This works as you might imagine you select some text, then fire up the tool which uses generative AI to do what it says on the tin, rewriting those words.

You get three different rewrites to choose from, and its possible to
fine-tune the AIs responses, so you can ask for something longer, for
example, or in a different tone.

This ability is rolling out to testers in the US, Canada, UK, France,
Germany, and Italy. As with most of the new features here, itll require you
to be signed in with a Microsoft account. (Image credit: Microsoft)

Theres another non-AI benefit for Notepad here in that the app will launch faster. Microsoft claims that Notepad will open more than 35% more swiftly, with some Windows 11 users seeing a speed boost of 55% or maybe even more.
So, Notepad should be considerably nippier when appearing on your desktop. Painting clever

Moving on to Paint, this core app is getting a feature called generative fill which can be used to easily add an AI-generated element to an image.

The example Microsoft shows is a person making a landscape who decides they want a castle in the picture. So, they simply select the area where they want it situated, and feed the AI a prompt in this case medieval castle and
Paint goes through its processing for some seconds before the castle appears.

Its nice and seamlessly integrated into the landscape, too, although we guess as ever with AI, the results could be variable. If you dont like what Paint has provided, you can ask it to try again, and generative fill will run once more to deliver a different take on a castle (or whatever it is you want).

Moving from creation to destruction, we have generative erase also inbound
for Paint. This lets you highlight an element in an image a person in the foreground for example and itll be removed, with Paint filling in the empty space left to match the background. Again, its clever stuff.

In this case, you brush over the area to be erased, allowing for a more fine-tuned selection than generative fill where you draw a box. (Image
credit: Microsoft via Unsplash ) Analysis: Copilot+ caveats

These are some pretty nifty AI-powered abilities with some slight caveats.
The main one being that Paints generative fill is only going to be available with Copilot+ PCs that have a Snapdragon (Arm) CPU initially. We presume itll come to other (non-Arm) Copilot+ PCs soon enough but as to whether Windows
11 users with a normal PC will ever get it, that might not be the case (as it may require the beefy NPU which is a requirement for a Copilot+ machine).

All the other features are coming to non-Copilot+ devices, mind, but theres another bonus here for Copilot+ PC owners. This is that Cocreator in Paint which is also exclusive to these Windows 11 devices, and creates AI-generated images from scratch has been made faster, with fine-tuning to its underlying diffusion-based model as Microsoft explains. So, everything you do with Cocreator should happen more swiftly.

The other potential catch, we guess, is that this is more fuel to the fire of discontent for some users who think that Notepad is getting beefed up too
much with features those folks would no doubt say bloated and that this is at odds with its core philosophy . That said, at least the freshly introduced sizeable performance boost for booting the app will go down well.

All of these features are still in early testing, as noted, so it could be some time before they hit PCs running the release version of Windows 11. Microsoft sounds like its being cautious with the rollout in testing, as its going to monitor feedback and see how it lands before pushing these updates
to more Windows Insiders. Even if youre a tester, then, you may not see these new features for a while yet. You may also like... Windows 11s feature to allow typing with your Xbox controller has vanished in a blow for owners of handheld gaming PCs Dont make these 5 big mistakes when using Windows 11 Windows 10 has a year left to live but are users prepared to upgrade to Windows 11?



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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/windows/windows-11s-paint-and-notepad-apps -are-getting-smart-new-ai-features-though-one-of-the-best-will-be-for-copilot- pcs-only


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