Microsoft Paint Can Now Create AI-Generated Colouring Books, Notepad Updated With New Markdown Features

Microsoft has started rolling out updates to Microsoft Paint and Notepad for those in the Windows Insider testing programme, introducing a range of new capabilities that tap artificial intelligence (AI). Among the changes, Paint is gaining an AI Colouring Book feature that lets users generate fully custom colouring pages by typing their desired text prompts. Apart from this, Notepad is also getting a couple of new features, including new Markdown syntax features. These have not yet rolled out globally, but will in the coming months.

Microsoft Adds New Paint and Notepad Features

In a Windows blog post, Microsoft announced the new features coming to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11. The new AI colouring book feature in MS Paint uses AI to transform natural language text prompts into line art that can be coloured digitally or printed for hand colouring. Users can open Paint, choose the colouring book option, and the tool will show a text box.

Typing the prompt here will automatically produce a simplified outline resembling the colouring books for children. Notably, the colouring book will be available only on Copilot+ PCs. To use the colouring book, users will need to sign in with their Microsoft account.

Alongside the colouring book feature, Paint also received a fill tolerance slider. This control lets users adjust how precisely the Fill tool applies colour to a selected area, offering finer control over painting and shading effects. Users can move the slider to increase or decrease the area that gets filled when using the tool, which can help with detailed artwork or effects where bleed-over would otherwise be an issue.

In Notepad, the update brings several improvements to text formatting and AI text tools. Microsoft expanded Markdown support to include features such as strikethrough and nested lists, which can be accessed via keyboard shortcuts, a formatting toolbar, or directly by typing markdown syntax. Notepad also added a new welcome experience designed to highlight recent features to users when they first open the app.

The update also enhances the behaviour of existing AI text features, Write, Rewrite and Summarise, by making results appear sooner through streaming previews. Instead of waiting for the entire response to be generated before seeing anything, users can interact with snippets of output as they arrive. These AI features work whether the text is generated locally on the device or in the cloud, but require testers to be signed in with their Microsoft account to use them.