Microsoft has begun rolling out updates to Microsoft Paint and Notepad as part of its Windows Insider testing program, introducing new features powered by artificial intelligence (AI).
These enhancements bring advanced capabilities to both iconic apps, marking a significant step in the company’s push to integrate AI into everyday software tools.
Microsoft’s new Paint and Notepad features
The new AI coloring book feature in MS Paint uses AI to transform natural language text prompts into line art that can be colored digitally or printed for hand coloring. Users can open Paint, choose the coloring book option, and the tool will show a text box.
Alongside the coloring book feature, Paint also received a fill tolerance slider. This control lets users adjust how precisely the Fill tool applies color to a selected area, offering finer control over painting and shading effects.
Users can move the slider to increase or decrease the area that gets filled when using the tool, which can help with detailed artwork or effects where bleed-over would otherwise be an issue.
In Notepad, the update brings several improvements to text formatting and AI text tools. Microsoft expanded Markdown support to include features such as strikethrough and nested lists, which can be accessed via keyboard shortcuts, a formatting toolbar, or directly by typing markdown syntax. Notepad also added a new welcome experience designed to highlight recent features to users when they first open the app.
The update also improves the performance of existing AI text features, ‘Write, Rewrite, and Summarize,’ by introducing streaming previews. This enhancement allows users to see results more quickly, with snippets of text appearing as they are generated, rather than waiting for the entire response to be completed.
Whether the text is generated locally on the device or in the cloud, these AI features require testers to be signed in with their Microsoft account to activate them, as per the reports.
