AI is now pervasive. Whether you want it or not, it can occasionally be found in chatbots, image tools, and search engines. However, with Windows 11, Microsoft is going in a different direction. The company is merely adding artificial intelligence to the tools you already use, rather than developing an entirely new suite of apps that you will need to learn.

This implies that programs like Snipping Tool, Photos, and even Microsoft Paint are becoming more intelligent without altering their recognizable user interface. And that’s what makes this update unique in a lot of ways.

Replacing what works is not the goal. The goal is to improve it.

Can You Copy Text From Screenshots?

The Snipping Tool has always been one of Windows’ most underappreciated tools. It is dependable but not particularly ostentatious. You use it to take screenshots of your screen and then continue. It is currently receiving a significant upgrade.

The Snipping Tool from Microsoft will now support optical character recognition (OCR). In other words, you can choose and copy text straight from a screenshot of a webpage, document, or even a picture that contains text.

Consider the number of times you have screenshotted something for future reference. Without having to type anything again, you can now actually pull that content directly into an email or document. Although it’s a minor feature, it addresses an issue that we’ve all encountered.

Paint and Pictures Get Much Better

AI is also being used to improve the Photos app. It’s no longer limited to image organization. Microsoft is expanding its toolkit to detect objects, people, pets, and more. With just a few clicks, you’ll be able to isolate a subject, eliminate backgrounds, and blur out distractions.

This is where things start to get interesting because MS Paint is also participating.

Text-to-image generation is being added to paint. This implies that Paint will create an image based on your prompt if you type something like “a spaceship floating above a desert.”

It is powered by the same AI that powers Bing’s image generator, most likely DALL·E from OpenAI. And no, changing designers isn’t the goal. Making creativity a little more approachable, despite the inability to draw a straight line, is the goal.

Paint still has the same appearance, but it now has some surprisingly potent technology.

Thanks to new hardware, everything operates locally.

The way these features function is what really makes them useful, even though they all sound fantastic.

Microsoft is putting more emphasis on Neural Processing Units (NPUs), which are specialized chips made to manage AI tasks directly on your computer. This implies that processing of your content does not require uploading it to the cloud. Everything takes place on your computer, locally.

There are several significant advantages to this:

• Speed: No need to wait for a response from servers.
• Privacy: Screenshots and photos stay on your device.
• AI tools that function offline—that is, without internet access.

New hardware, such as AMD’s Ryzen 7040 processors and Intel’s Meteor Lake chips, is increasingly featuring NPUs. Therefore, you’ll probably get these improvements right out of the box if you intend to upgrade your PC soon.

AI isn’t supposed to be dazzling. AI is designed to assist.

And that’s precisely why it’s so valuable.