Microsoft has continued to shovel AI into its built-in Home windows inbox apps, and now it is rolling out a Notepad replace that can use Copilot to write down textual content for you.
The updates are available in the identical week that Redmond launched a snappy, lightweight command line editor that’s the antithesis of what the venerable Notepad has develop into.
Notepad’s Write characteristic requires customers to register with their Microsoft account, choose the place they need the brand new content material to go (or make a choice for reference), after which select Write from the Copilot menu to immediate the AI to generate textual content, which you’ll be able to evaluation and insert into Notepad if it suits your wants.
The output can then be saved, discarded, or refined with follow-up prompts. Copilot may be disabled within the app’s settings.
It’s unclear who requested for this, or why Microsoft thinks customers of a once-simple textual content editor require this help. If it have been crucial, then absolutely an app like WordPad would have been a greater place (if Microsoft hadn’t killed it off, presumably so it may higher deal with bloating Notepad).
At the very least with Outlook in Microsoft 365, the thought of letting an AI write emails for you possibly can enchantment to overly busy center managers or individuals who wrestle to provide you with written communication. However Notepad is primarily used for fast and soiled duties like jotting down concepts or pasting fussily formatted information into plain textual content to make the precise textual content extra simply transportable.
Microsoft’s AI ambitions for Notepad first appeared simply over a yr in the past. In November 2024, a “Rewrite” operate turned up, with choices to tweak textual content primarily based on the tone, format, and size necessities of a person.
Notepad dates again to Home windows 1.0 and remained roughly unchanged for many years, with solely an occasional fix. In recent times, nonetheless, it has undergone a number of tweaks and enhancements by the hands of Microsoft, culminating within the new generative AI options.
Microsoft is including extra AI options to a different inbox instrument – Paint. After giving the ageing instrument a reprieve in 2019, Microsoft wasted no time giving it a makeover. The newest adjustments come from Microsoft’s AI steady and embody a sticker generator (kind what you need, and a set of stickers will probably be generated from the immediate) and a wise choice instrument for isolating and enhancing particular person parts in a picture.
For customers who cannot sustain with all the brand new options, there’s additionally a brand new “welcome expertise.”
It’s tough to see many of those updates as far more than additions for the sake of including them. We doubt that customers have been clamoring for AI in Notepad in the identical method that they may be demanding Microsoft stops transport updates that bork the working system. ®
