Given Microsoft’s continuing obsession with all things AI, it’s perhaps not surprising that the app’s latest update (currently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders) is a generative AI feature called Rewrite that promises to adjust the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs using generative AI.
Microsoft is also adding generative fill and erase features to Paint in this update; the Paint app has already picked up several AI-powered image-generation and editing features.
This Prism update adds support for newer x86 CPU instructions important for running games and high-end professional apps, including support for the AVX and AVX2 extensions.
Microsoft says these extensions are already available in Windows 11 24H2 specifically to support Adobe’s Premiere Pro app, but this new update will enable these extensions (among others) for all apps.
Prism still doesn’t support AVX512 extensions, though even modern Intel processors have mostly dropped support for these over the last few years.
Notepad, a simple built-in text editor that was essentially unchanged in early 2021 from its 1990s and 2000s counterpart, is one of the decades-old Windows applications that Microsoft has given new life to during the Windows 11 era. It has received numerous updates since then, such as window tabs, spellcheck and autocorrect, and a visual redesign.
The most recent update to the app, which is presently in preview for Canary and Dev Windows Insiders, is a generative AI feature called Rewrite. This feature promises to use generative AI to change the length, tone, and phrasing of highlighted sentences or paragraphs, which is perhaps not surprising given Microsoft’s ongoing obsession with all things AI. Depending on what they’ve highlighted, users will be presented with three rewritten options. They can choose their favorite or instruct the app to try again.
Given that it requires a Microsoft account sign-in to function and uses cloud-side processing (instead of your local CPU, GPU, or NPU), Rewrite seems to be built on the same technology as the Copilot assistant. US, French, UK, Canadian, Italian, and German users can access the first preview.
If AI isn’t important to you or you don’t use a Microsoft account, keep in mind that Microsoft is also promising significant speedups with this Notepad version. According to Microsoft’s Windows apps manager Dave Grochocki’s blog post, “Most users will see app launch times improve by more than 35 percent, with some users seeing improvements of 55 percent or more.”.
In this update, Microsoft is also introducing generative fill and erase capabilities to Paint, which already has a number of AI-powered image-generation and editing tools. Users can choose a portion of an existing image and type a prompt to have an AI-generated image fill in that portion using the generative fill addition feature. By eliminating objects from a specific region of the image and making an effort to recreate the background, generative erase accomplishes the opposite. The distinction between the two is that generative erase can be used on any Windows 11 PC, whereas generative fill is limited to Copilot+ PCs with Snapdragon X Elite chips.
Technically, Prism, Microsoft’s rebranded x86-to-Arm app translation layer for Windows PCs with Arm processors, such as the Surface Pro and Surface Laptop with Snapdragon X Elite, now has some new features thanks to a new Windows Insider Canary channel build that was made public yesterday.
Support for the AVX and AVX2 extensions, as well as other newer x86 CPU instructions necessary for running games and expensive professional apps, are added in this Prism update. Microsoft claims that although these extensions are already present in Windows 11 24H2 for the purpose of supporting Adobe’s Premiere Pro app, the latest update will make them (as well as others) available for all apps.
Although support for AVX512 extensions has largely been discontinued by modern Intel processors in recent years, Prism still does not support them. Only fully 64-bit Intel apps can use the new extensions; 32-bit apps or 64-bit apps that use a 32-bit helper to detect CPU feature support cannot. “.”.
