Nifty ‘generative fill’ in Paint is for Arm-based Copilot+ PCs only
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 11’s Paint and Notepad stock apps have been worked on considerably in the recent past, and are getting some new AI features – albeit they’re 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).
Let’s 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 it’s possible to fine-tune the AI’s 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, it’ll require you to be signed in with a Microsoft account.
There’s 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.
