According to Windows Central, Microsoft may be bringing AI capabilities to a handful of Windows 11 apps, including Photos, Snipping Tool, and Paint. “Some of this functionality requires special hardware, such as an NPU (neural processing unit) or VPU (vision processing unit), while others may not,” the report said. From the report: For the Photos app, Microsoft is working on an AI functionality that will allow the app to identify objects or people in photos and provide the ability to cut and paste those elements elsewhere. This is a functionality that iOS and Android have had for a while, so it’s no surprise to hear that Microsoft is also working on bringing it to Windows.
As for the Snipping Tool, my sources say the company wants to integrate OCR (optical character recognition) technology to allow Windows to identify text in screenshots so copying from the clipboard can be faster. Microsoft is also working to bring OCR to the Camera app to allow users to select text in a photo taken with the device.
Finally, my sources say that Microsoft has also experimented with introducing generative AI into the Windows 11 Paint app. Users can ask Paint to create a canvas based on user-determined criteria, similar to how Bing Image Creator currently works. Sources say the Paint AI integration will be based on that same Bing technology.