Quote:Microsoft announced a range of new AI features for the classic Windows programs Paint, Notepad and Snipping Tool. While some can be best described as more of the same, some are new and sounding useful.

The announcement reveals that the updates come to the applications in Canary and Dev versions of Windows 11. It is likely that they will launch in stable versions of Windows 11 later this year, but Microsoft has not published a timeline at the time of writing.

Let's take a look at the three programs and the features that Microsoft is introducing, starting with the weakest of the bunch.

Notepad



Notepad, version 11.2504.46.0, received a few AI features in the past already. These allow users to rewrite existing content among other things. The latest version adds text generation to the mix. Write what you would like and Copilot creates text based on the instruction in Notepad.

The feature requires AI credits and works similarly to other AI tools, including free to access tools like the web-version of Copilot that do not require AI credits. To that extend, it is not particularly useful, unless you use Notepad frequently for writing and use AI tools for text generation as well.

How to use: Press Ctrl-Q, right-click and select write, or select Write from the Copilot menu.

Tip: you can restore classic Notepad in Windows 11, if you like.

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