Windows 11 AI Updates: Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad Reinvented with AI Features

Windows 11 continues to evolve at a rapid pace, with Microsoft recently unveiling an impressive slate of AI-powered updates for three of its most widely-used built-in applications: Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad. Aimed at both creatives and productivity-focused users, these enhancements mark a notable shift in the company’s strategy—reshaping familiar apps with cutting-edge artificial intelligence capabilities. This wave of innovation arrives as part of the Windows Insider program in the Canary and Dev builds and is particularly targeted at the emerging category of Copilot+ PCs, which are designed to leverage Microsoft's AI features to their fullest extent.

Redefining Paint: AI-Generated Stickers, Smart Object Selection, and a New Start Experience​

For decades, Microsoft Paint has held a nostalgic place in Windows users' hearts. With the rise of digital creativity tools, however, it risked falling behind more specialized software. Microsoft’s new feature-set aims to give Paint a modern edge, making it not only a tool for basic image editing but also a playground for AI creativity.

AI Sticker Generation: Opening New Creative Possibilities​

A clear highlight is the addition of AI-generated stickers within Paint. This feature introduces a dedicated button in the Copilot menu, unleashing generative artificial intelligence to transform simple text prompts into custom stickers. Users just enter a description—such as “blue cat with sunglasses” or “retro game controller”—and the AI synthesizes a matching graphic sticker almost instantly.
Key points:

• Seamless Workflow: Stickers generated via AI can be copied into other applications or saved locally, supporting streamlined creativity across workflows—particularly beneficial for content creators, students, and social media enthusiasts.
• Copilot+ Exclusive: The sticker-generation feature is only available on Copilot+ PCs, which is a new distinction in the Windows ecosystem. These machines are equipped with dedicated neural processing units (NPUs) and optimized hardware to support advanced AI tasks natively, suggesting a future where hardware requirements increasingly shape software experiences.

Smart Object Selection: Intelligent Editing Made Easy​

Another robust addition to Paint is Smart Object Selection. Previously, cropping or highlighting objects in an image relied on manual effort and steady hands. Now, by leveraging AI-driven edge detection and context analysis, Paint will allow users to quickly highlight and isolate individual objects with much greater precision.

• User Experience: The new tool simplifies isolating people, animals, or products in photos, reducing the time and expertise required for quality results.
• Competitive Edge: This blurs the gap between Paint and more advanced editors like Adobe Photoshop Express or GIMP, democratizing powerful image-editing tools previously reserved for professionals.

New Start Window: Keeping Users Informed​

Paint now features a revised start window to present users with recent updates, tips, and highlights of new capabilities. This ensures that both casual and frequent users can immediately discover the latest enhancements each time they launch the app—a subtle nudge toward user engagement and retention.

Snipping Tool Level-Up: Perfect Screenshots and Color Picker via AI​

Microsoft’s Snipping Tool, long a staple for quick screenshots, receives two essential upgrades powered by AI.

Perfect Screenshot: Intelligent, No-Fuss Captures​

Capturing an “ideal” part of the screen—without extraneous clutter—has persistently bothered those needing pixel-perfect excerpts. The new Perfect Screenshot feature brings artificial intelligence to this challenge: upon activation, it analyzes on-screen content, intelligently selects the desired area, and delivers a cropped, refined image.

• Ease-of-Use: No more manual tweaks after the grab—especially helpful for those sharing code, graphics, or web designs.
• Copilot+ PC Requirement: Like Paint’s stickers, this AI feature is exclusive to Copilot+ systems, illustrating Microsoft’s intention to push hardware-software integration.

Color Picker: Every Shade, Simplified​

The ability to identify any color onscreen is a small but deeply practical enhancement. By selecting Color Picker from the Snipping Tool menu, users can hover over any UI or image element and grab precise color codes (HEX, RGB, HSL).

• Workflow Integration: This makes color matching for design work, theme tuning, or accessibility compliance extremely efficient.
• Accessibility Angle: For users with visual impairments or those working with strict branding requirements, this feature cuts down on guesswork and manual color hunting.

Notepad Transformed: Generative AI Writing and Editing​

Perhaps the most striking development is the infusion of generative AI into Notepad, which has traditionally been a barebones text editor. Now, with the power of artificial intelligence, drafting and refining text becomes dramatically faster and more intelligent.

Write Command: From Copilot to Creativity​

Using the Write command—accessible via the menu or Ctrl + Q—users can initiate AI-driven content creation or editing directly at any cursor point within a Notepad document. This includes:

• Automatic Summarization: Creating headlines, abstracts, or concise bullet points from dense content.
• Text Generation: Suggesting next sentences, rephrasing paragraphs, or composing entire notes based on a given theme or outline.
• Productivity Boost: Ideal for brainstorming, composing technical notes, or swiftly documenting meeting minutes without leaving the familiar Notepad interface.

Privacy and User Control​

Recognizing sensitivity around AI-generated content, Microsoft enables users to disable these AI features in settings. This is a crucial step toward ensuring user trust and data security—allowing those wary of AI interaction to retain traditional Notepad functionality with a single toggle.

The Copilot+ PC Era: What It Means for Users​

Many of these enhancements are limited to the new breed of Copilot+ PCs, a category characterized by AI-optimized hardware (such as NPUs), robust security, and a unified software stack. While this pushes the boundaries of what’s possible on-device—especially for offline AI processing—it also raises concerns around fragmentation and hardware lock-in.

Dividing the User Base​

• Two-Tier Experience: Users with compatible Copilot+ PCs gain access to the full suite of features, while others are restricted, even when running the same Windows build.
• Upgrade Dilemma: Long-standing Windows users may find themselves facing hardware upgrade prompts sooner than anticipated, reminiscent of prior transitions (e.g., the leap from 32-bit to 64-bit, or Windows 10’s push for newer CPUs).
• Environmental Impact: The hardware churn required to leverage these AI tools could fuel greater electronic waste unless managed carefully.

Performance and Privacy Considerations​

By performing AI inference locally, Copilot+ PCs offer tangible privacy benefits—user data stays on the device, minimizing cloud-based data transmission. This not only addresses privacy-conscious users' concerns but could also reduce latency and boost productivity for power users working offline or in restricted environments.
However, such advanced features necessitate dedicated silicon, and early adopters may face higher initial costs or growing pains related to drivers and compatibility.

Critical Analysis: Strengths and Cautions​

Notable Strengths​

• Productivity Leap: The integration of contextual AI across basic utilities removes friction from daily tasks, making creativity and documentation more accessible than ever.
• User-Centric Focus: Features such as toggling AI and surfacing updates in-app signal a thoughtful approach to user autonomy.
• Competitive Differentiation: By deploying advanced machine learning workloads locally, Microsoft differentiates Windows 11 from rivals more reliant on cloud-based AI, such as Chrome OS.

Potential Risks & Unanswered Questions​

• Feature Fragmentation: With key capabilities locked to Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft risks alienating segments of its user base who may not wish, or be able, to upgrade in the short term.
• Transparency and Trust: While local AI is an improvement for privacy, Microsoft must clearly communicate how user data is processed, how models are updated, and ensure users can fully control their data.
• Quality of AI Output: As with any generative AI, there’s a risk of subpar, off-topic, or biased outputs. For graphic creation, ensuring the quality and appropriateness of stickers or edited photos is paramount.
• Dependency on AI: There's a subtle risk in shifting basic skills (like freehand cropping or concise writing) to AI delegation. Users may become less fluent in these tasks over time.
• Accessibility Gaps: While AI can aid users with disabilities, if newer features require expensive hardware, those most in need may be left behind if they don't have access to the latest devices.

Outlook and Industry Implications​

These AI-driven updates to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad aren’t just evolutionary—they’re emblematic of Microsoft’s larger vision for Windows: infusing ubiquitous productivity tools with the intuition and flexibility of artificial intelligence, while nudging users toward a new generation of hardware tailored for these workloads.

• Software Refresh: By rejuvenating core utilities, Microsoft modernizes its OS without drastically altering familiar workflows, likely increasing adoption among both legacy and new users.
• Ecosystem Play: This update is also implicitly a pitch for Copilot+ PCs, a category that could drive new partnerships with hardware OEMs, incentivizing rapid AI hardware innovation across the ecosystem.
• Competitive Signaling: With Apple’s recent advancements in on-device AI (such as Apple Silicon and macOS Handoff), and Google’s ongoing AI push in Chrome OS, Microsoft is staking its claim in the race to redefine the desktop experience.

Conclusion: An Ambitious Yet Cautious Evolution​

The infusion of AI into staple Windows applications like Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad reflects a careful blend of innovation and restraint. Microsoft is not simply patching legacy tools—it is reimagining them for an age where creative work and productivity blend seamlessly with artificial intelligence. The emphasis on keeping users informed, providing opt-out controls, and driving features through the Copilot+ PC brand shows a company acutely aware of both opportunity and responsibility.
Yet, as with any technological leap, these benefits will be shaped by how thoughtfully Microsoft executes on privacy, inclusivity, transparency, and upgrade costs. For Windows enthusiasts, creative professionals, and everyday users, the latest updates promise to make daily tasks not only faster and smarter, but also more enjoyable. It’s a future where AI is less of a mysterious presence and more of a familiar coworker—ever-present, yet never overbearing—within the world’s most popular operating system.

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Source: Mezha.Media Microsoft adds new AI features to Paint, Snipping Tool, and Notepad