Microsoft Paint brushes up on AI

• Microsoft Paint now features a Copilot AI
• New AI Paint tools include Cocreator, Image Creator, and Generative Erase
• Windows is adding AI search to find photos using natural language

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.

Organization Copilot

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.

You might also like

• Microsoft's AI Copilot makeover lets it see and speak
• Microsoft Copilot just gave you ChatGPT’s second best reasoning model for free, but there are some limitations
• Microsoft could be about to rebrand its AI into Windows Intelligence rather than Copilot