Microsoft quietly added a new AI feature, called Cocreator, into its raster graphics editor included in every version of Windows since 1985. You need a Copilot + PC with an NPU that can deliver 40 TOPS or better to use it. So, you need to shell out at least $1,099 to get one of the new Snapdragon X Windows Copilot+ PCs that launched recently if you want your version of Microsoft Paint to come with Cocreator enabled.
However, Microsoft still requires you to sign in with your Microsoft account and be connected to the internet “to ensure safe use of AI.” According to Microsoft’s Privacy Statement, “Cocreator uses Azure online services to help ensure the safe and ethical use of AI. These services do content filtering to prevent the generation of harmful, offensive, or inappropriate content. Microsoft collects attributes such as device and user identifiers, along with the user prompts, to facilitate abuse prevention and monitoring. Microsoft does not store your input images or generated images.”
This is a nightmare for security and privacy-conscious users, especially as Microsoft recently blocked the last easy workaround to set up Windows 11 without a Microsoft account. Microsoft is likely doing this to stop unscrupulous users from generating illegal images like child and non-consensual deep fake pornography. However, storing this information is also a source of concern, as prompts a user typed in and stored on their account could be stolen. And, no matter how innocent, it could then be weaponized and used against them.
If I recall correctly it didn’t even have those in the beginning. I loved making random curves and filling the resulting shapes with some of the 16 (or 32?) colors available back then.
Our first family computer, a tremendous beast with 128KB of RAM, a 40MB HDD and a whopping 6MHz processor that you could clock up to 12MHz, there was a program that I used to do that too. I can’t remember what it was called, pretty sure it was not Paint tho (I faintly remember typing “colors” to get to it). You could draw squiggly lines with a pen tool, enter text, circles and squares, but no triangles. You could also fill shapes with color (2 switchable pallets with 16 colors each IIRC) and even “shade” the area. The shading was just diagonal, parallel lines, but you could choose which direction they go lol