Microsoft Paint Gets AI Upgrade with New Copilot Button

Microsoft Paint brushes up on AI

Microsoft Paint, that humble program you may only call up for a very quick image crop, is getting an AI upgrade thanks to a new Copilot button. Microsoft's AI assistant can now help create and enhance any sketches or MS Paint-based visions you care to put down in pixels. For now, the update is limited to Windows Insiders, though, presumably, Microsoft will expand access as they refine the feature. For those with access, clicking the Copilot button in the Paint taskbar will offer a menu of AI-powered features. That includes Image Creator, which turns text prompts into images using OpenAI's DALL-E model, Cocreator, which uses AI to combine text prompts with any doodles you make in Paint to produce a new kind of artwork, and Generative Erase, which can take objects (or people) out of an image without disturbing the background. This isn't the first time Paint has flirted with AI. In 2023, Microsoft started adding Cocreator to Paint, followed by generative fill, which lets you remove or modify parts of an image by instructing the AI to replace them with something new. This simply organizes all the AI tools neatly under the Copilot banner, making it easier to find and use them in one place. Paint is just one of the stations Copilot is setting up across Windows. The AI is already built into the Windows taskbar, the Edge browser, the Office 365 platform, and even some keyboards. That said, offering AI in Microsoft Paint fits with how people might actually use the application. Making and editing images is the whole point of Paint; Copilot simply expands those abilities. But this isn't just about Paint. Microsoft is also rolling out updates to its AI-powered search, which first appeared in preview earlier this month. Until now, AI search only worked with files stored locally on your PC. This new update expands to cloud storage as well, meaning you can now find your OneDrive photos just by describing them. Instead of scrolling through endless folders of screenshots and vacation photos, you can type something like "beach sunset from last summer" and let AI do the rest. It's a small but significant shift toward a more intuitive way of managing files. Paint may not be the most exciting Microsoft tool, but the incorporation of AI tools is notable as an evolution of an app that many assumed Microsoft would abandon years ago. Instead, Paint may thrive in the AI era thanks to the very simplicity that has made it appealing for decades.

Microsoft Paint gets Copilot button for generative AI features

The new button grants convenient access to generative AI features like Cocreator and Image Creator. According to a recent blog post, a new update is being rolled out to Windows 11 Insiders (Build 26120.3073) that adds a bunch of fixes and improvements, including a Copilot button in Microsoft Paint. Clicking the Copilot button will expand a drop-down menu with all the generative AI features: Cocreator and Image Creator (AI art based on what you've drawn or text prompts), Generative Erase (AI removal of unwanted stuff from images), and Remove Background. Note that these generative AI features have been in Microsoft Paint for some time, but this quick-access Copilot button is a nice time-saver and productivity booster if you use them a lot. Other notable changes in this update include finding photos saved in the cloud using the new Windows Search (only for Copilot+ PCs), plus bug fixes to the Taskbar, System Tray, File Explorer, and more. Again, this update is a preview that's currently only available to Windows Insiders. It's unknown when Paint's Copilot button will come to everyone else on the stable version of Windows 11.

Microsoft Is Clubbing the AI Features in Paint Inside a New Copilot Menu

The Windows 11 update is available in the Canary and Dev channels Microsoft released a new Windows 11 Insider Preview build on Friday that makes changes to the Paint app and improves the Windows Search functionality. The new beta update is currently available to Windows Insider users in the Canary and Dev channels. With this, Microsoft Paint's artificial intelligence (AI) features are now available inside a new Copilot menu. Additionally, the new semantic indexing in Windows Search also supports files saved in OneDrive. Notably, these features are coming to the Snapdragon-powered Copilot+ PCs. In a blog post, Microsoft detailed the new features arriving with the new Windows 11 beta update. The features are part of the Windows 11 Insider preview build version 26120.3073 (KB5050090) and can be accessed via the Canary and Dev channels. The tech giant has not revealed when these features might be rolled out to all users globally. Microsoft has added several AI-powered features to the Paint app over the last two years. The Cocreator feature can generate AI images by taking input from whatever the user has doodled. Users also get an option to granularly control the level of AI enhancement to the drawn image. Similarly, Image Creator is a text-to-image tool that generates images based on a text prompt and art style chosen by the user. Additionally, Paint also has a Generative Erase feature that allows users to erase an unwanted object from an image and replace it by generating the background and blending it. Finally, the Remove Background feature lets users remove the background from any image with a single click. With the new update, all of these images are now being placed inside a Copilot menu, which is placed near the right side of the toolbar. Once the dropdown menu is clicked, all the available features with a short description will be visible. Notably, the Cocreator feature is only available in Copilot+ PCs. Apart from this, Microsoft is also expanding the semantic indexing feature in Windows Search. First introduced last month in preview, the natural language search feature will now also support photos and files saved in OneDrive's cloud storage. This feature will also be available to just the Copilot+ PC users.