Microsoft's Notepad and Paint applications have been part of Windows for decades, and up until recently they were both pretty barebones applications - one for creating and editing text-based documents and the other for creating simple graphics.

But that's starting to change. Earlier this year Microsoft brought a spell checker to Notepad and started adding AI features like background removable to Paint. Now the company has released previews of several new AI-based features coming to the MS Paint and Notepad applications.

So what kind of new experiences are we talking about?

Microsoft Paint is getting a generative fill feature that lets you select an area in an image using the rectangle or free-form selection tools and then use a text prompt to generate an object that should fill that space. There's a "try again" button in case you aren't happy with the initial results, and you can hit "keep" to save the AI-generated addition to your image.

Generative erase is kind of the opposite: you can highlight an object you want to remove with the eraser tool and then Paint will examine other aspects of the image to not only delete the item you've selected for removal, but to also fill the space with graphics that hopefully make it look like the object was never there in the first place.

And a Cocreator update should lead to faster and "better" results when you use this feature to turn your scribbles into something a little more professional looking.

This update is available now for members of the Windows Insider program running Dev Channel or Canary Channel builds of Windows 11 on Copilot+ PCs with Qualcomm Snapdragon X series processors.

Since the new features leverage Qualcomm's NPU for on-device hardware accelerated AI, older PCs with different chips aren't support. But I suspect Microsoft will add support for PCs with the latest Intel and AMD chips in the future, since they also have NPUs that should deliver performance that matches or exceeds what's available from Qualcomm's laptop processors.

The new version of Notepad includes a Rewrite tool that you can use to highlight text that you want to tweak and generate suggestions for ways to change the language by adjusting tone or length.

For example, if your text feels a little wordy or stiff, you should be able to use this tool to shorten the language and make it sound more casual or conversational. Microsoft says Rewrite "will generate three variations of the rewritten text for you," giving you several options to choose from. But you can also change your settings and hit "retry" if you're not happy with the results.

Thew new Notepad Rewrite tool is available "in preview to all users on Windows 11" in the US, Canada, UK, Canada, Italy, and Germany who sign in with a Microsoft account. Users in Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand can also use the feature, but they'll need a Microsoft 365 Personal, Family, or Copilot Pro subscription.