One of the biggest surprises reserved for upcoming versions of Windows is the fact that Paint is trying to be more Photoshop-like than ever. After decades being a bog-standard basic image editor, it’s now surprising people with new features such as layers, transparency, and a neat option to automatically remove the background of pictures. Now, being a Microsoft product, it can’t ship without some AI features, and for Paint, it won’t be any different.
Paint is adding a new feature called the “Cocreator,” which is basically like putting DALL-E on Paint. The co-creator will let you put a prompt on Paint, select an art style, and watch an image generate right in front of you. It’ll give you three variants of each image you make, that you can then choose from. This is similar to the generative AI fill tool that Adobe recently added to Photoshop, except Adobe’s implementation is more focused on photorealism, while DALL-E is typically better at digital art or more stylized images.
There are two main things to note here. First off, even as this feature is being rolled out only to an experimental version of Paint only available for Insiders, it’s also limited within that population. When you get the update, you’ll have to join a waitlist before you can actually use these AI features.
Even then, you’re limited in the amount of images you can generate. There is a credit system involved — you get 50 credits when you’re allowed in the preview, and each credit is valid for one image generation with one prompt. It’s not clear if this credit system will stick around once the new Paint actually rolls out to everyone. That’s the same system currently used in the Bing Image Creator, as creating AI images requires specialized servers that cost more money for Microsoft to keep running.
The new Paint experience is rolling out to Insider users, so those who want to try it out will need to enroll. Then again, like we always warn, you shouldn’t sign up if you’re not willing to deal with beta-grade and possibly-broken software.
Source: Microsoft
