Windows 11 Photos and Paint apps are set for major upgrades with new AI features, but most users won’t get them
The Microsoft AI hype train is now well underway and the next stop will be Windows 11’s Photos and Paint apps getting another dose of AI integration.
Microsoft is currently holding its Build 2024 conference, where the company has already introduced its range of new AI-focused Copilot+ PCs, including a feature called ‘Recall’ that records activity on the PC and makes it searchable. Microsoft has also introduced an improved Cocreator feature for the Paint app.
Cocreator runs locally on Copilot+ PCs and uses the more powerful NPUs (Neural Processing Units) on these devices to generate images from text prompts you provide. The current Paint app does have an AI-powered Image Creator feature, but it is not the same as Cocreator.
Cocreator is different because it works locally on your computer and doesn’t need to go online to tap into the computing power to generate images. In addition, it produces images faster than Image Creator, although the latter is not deleted; the two options will work side by side.
The new feature was demonstrated by Microsoft on a Surface Pro, with the presenter entering a prompt and drawing a basic outline of what he wanted the image to look like. Cocreator then used this information to generate the image based on the rough shapes that were drawn.
It also shows that Cocreator has a ‘Style’ drop-down menu, presumably to choose the style you want to generate the image in, and a ‘Creativity’ slider.
Increasing that creativity slider produces a higher quality image, filled in with a greater level of detail, with the AI exerting its capabilities more, while at the lower end of the scale the image generated more closely matches the user’s rough sketch.
The ability to experiment with styles in the Photos app
The Photos app in Windows 11 is also getting an AI boost on Copilot+ PCs in the form of a feature called ‘Restyle Image’. This allows you to transform your own photos with preset artistic styles, for example taking a photo of your pet and turning it into an anime-style image.
There’s a text box where you can enter prompts to give the function your own specific instructions about the style you want your photo to transform into, and a ‘Creativity’ slider that apparently works the same way as the one in Cocreator.
That was an interesting aspect picked up by Windows Latest is that there doesn’t seem to be a set number of credits limiting the number of times you can use either feature. Both Cocreator and the ‘Restyle Image’ capabilities can be run locally on your PC as many times as you like using small language models.
Both features also require the PC to have a processor with an appropriate NPU, so they won’t be available on all Windows PCs, including existing devices running Windows 11. This is only for laptops using the new Snapdragon X chip, or other Copilot+ PCs with future AMD or Intel silicon.
For those interested in AI support, this is good news, just like the other AI tools Microsoft is introducing in Windows 11. It makes things that were unthinkable to most people not so long ago easily accessible with a few clicks , without even having to go online.
If you’re not a fan of AI-powered apps, then I imagine this news will simply be a continuation of the problems you may experience with AI being everywhere these days.
Either way, it doesn’t seem like Microsoft will be at all discouraged from going down this path, and it will continue to try to become the industry standard for AI-focused consumer products.