Among the decades-old Windows apps to get renewed attention from Microsoft during the Windows 11 era is Notepad, the basic built-in text editor that was much the same in early 2021 as it had been in the '90 and 2000s. Since then, it has gotten a raft of updates, including a visual redesign, spellcheck and autocorrect, and window tabs.
Given Microsoft's continuing obsession with all things AI, it's perhaps not surprising that the app's latest update (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI. Users will be offered three rewritten options based on what they've highlighted, and they can select the one they like best or tell the app to try again.
Rewrite appears to be based on the same technology as the Copilot assistant, since it uses cloud-side processing (rather than your local CPU, GPU, or NPU) and requires Microsoft account sign-in to work. The initial preview is available to users in the US, France, the UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany.
If you don't care about AI or you don't sign in with a Microsoft account, note that Microsoft is also promising substantial improvements in launch time with this version of Notepad. "Most users will see app launch times improve by more than 35 percent, with some users seeing improvements of 55 percent or more," reads the blog post by Microsoft's Windows apps manager Dave Grochocki.
Microsoft is also adding generative fill and erase features to Paint in this update; the Paint app has already picked up several AI-powered image-generation and editing features. The generative fill addition allows users to select part of an existing image and type a prompt to fill in that area of the image with something AI-generated. Generative erase does the opposite, removing objects from a selected area of the image and attempting to recreate the background. The difference between the two is that generative fill is only available on Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite chips in them, while generative erase will work on any Windows 11 PC.
On the technical end of things, a new Windows Insider Canary channel build released yesterday adds some new features to Prism, Microsoft's rebranded x86-to-Arm app translation layer for Arm-powered Windows PCs like the Snapdragon X Elite-powered Surface Pro and Surface Laptop.
This Pris
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