15 ms·

Even Microsoft Notepad is getting AI text editing now

281 points by redbell 2y ago

Eddy_Viscosity2 2y ago
Does this mean its going to bloated and slow to open. I want notepad to be absolutely instant. Even calculator is getting slower to open now. I want these simple apps to be fast af.
disqard 2y ago
Is it safe to say we've crested the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI? I've seen several essays/posts describing "AI Fatigue" recently.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- cj 2y ago
  Here's a Google Trend graph of the last 5 years for "AI" (and "crypto" for comparison). https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=crypto,ai&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... At least based on search volume, we're still on an upward swing.
  - adra 2y ago
    I'm sure there's some fascinating research to be discovered for why the most crypto of the US states are Nevada, Florida, Hawaii, and Alaska.
fecal_henge 2y ago
First tabbed documents and now this!
Refusing23 2y ago
i dont think we need that
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Sends everything you write to Microsoft.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- esperent 2y ago
  Unless and until I see a clear privacy police analyzed by a lawyer, stating categorically that this doesn't happen, I think it's wise to assume that you are correct here.
  - jpnc 2y ago
    There's a reason Windows went from 'MyComputer' to 'This PC'.
    - mrob 2y ago
      While it's possible they meant something nefarious, I think the goal was probably just to prevent confusion around shared computers. Such confusion might seem unlikely, but when your market is as big as Microsoft's even unlikely things happen all the time.
    - diftraku 2y ago
      "Our PC"
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  Kinda defeats the point of “AI PCs” then…
  - deprecative 2y ago
    You've got it reversed. AI PCs are just SPAs. You offload the workload to the client then send the resulting payload back.
sethammons 2y ago
Notepad and plain text is the last place I want AI. I just want a place to type and paste non-formatted (outside of whitespace) text.
- Auracle 2y ago
  There’s probably a way to turn it off but I hate how it auto opens the last file now.
  - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
    The addition of tabs to Notepad has made me stop using it entirely. My entire workflow around it was having separate windows for each document that I could move and close freely. Having an all-in-one-place Notepad filled with the ghosts of API tokens past is precisely the opposite of what I needed.
    - zigman1 2y ago
      But you can still open multiple windows?
      - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
        It doesn't open in new windows by default, which was enough for me to stop using it.
        EasyMark 2y ago
        I think it takes maybe 3 clicks to set up "old style notepad". I don't understand the harsh criticism? I don't use it myself since I have a sublime license, and st3 opens up instantly, but I don't think the new changes to notepad are the end of the world.
        aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
        I don’t understand why anything I said is a “harsh criticism” or “the end of the world.” I don’t actually care about Notepad! It might have taken 3 clicks to set it up, but it took zero clicks to say “this is a change I didn’t want and I don’t care enough to learn how to fix it, I’ll just use something else.”
wruza 2y ago
https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html if you feel threatened or got tired of encoding/newline issues. Works as a drop-in replacement (replaces .exe). https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad2/code/HEAD/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad2/code/HEAD/tree/ for source code.
bakugo 2y ago
At this point I wouldn't even bat an eye if someone tried to sell me an AI toilet that uses an image recognition model to analyze my bowel movements.
- fragmede 2y ago
  Adult Swim did it first: https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ
- GreekPete 2y ago
  I just bought a washing machine that has an AI wash mode.
- xarope 2y ago
  I think those exist already...!
- lynx23 2y ago
  I would be surprised if Toylet-companies weren't already working on something like that.
  - inversetelecine 2y ago
    Account and internet connection required. Now with "Ads while you go" technology.
- weikju 2y ago
  These are in the work [0] for a few years already. [1] [0] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/toilet-camera-uses-ai-to-analyze-pics-of-poop-and-measure-your-gut-health https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/toilet-camera-uses-a... [1] https://today.duke.edu/2021/05/smart-toilet-uses-artificial-intelligence-monitor-bowel-health https://today.duke.edu/2021/05/smart-toilet-uses-artificial-... (from before the LLM hype cycle, even!)
ch1kkenm4ss4 2y ago
They should also convert it to Electron.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Calm down, Satan.
lintfordpickle 2y ago
Signing in to MS to use notepad? Nah I don't think so
rebolek 2y ago
what about MS Paint? Can it get AI assistant to create shitty pixel art? Edit: Oh. It does too.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  Oh Lord, MS Paint has AI, too?
sebtron 2y ago
A while ago I wrote about my experience using Windows for work after 10 years of being a Linux-only user [1]. One of the positive notes I had was: > As a positive note, the default text editor Notepad is nice and lightweight, a good piece of software. Unfortunately, they screwed it up with Windows 11. And apparently they are doubling down on this. [1] https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/ https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-deskto...
- pxoe 2y ago
  on windows 11 it's still lightweight and snappy though, with tabs, autosave, dark theme and design that fits in and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I disagree. I mean, it could be worse, but notepad has become feature-laden enough that it almost eliminates the usefulness of the program. I may as well use a full text editor.
    - fuzzfactor 2y ago
      I know what you mean. I understand why people would like it, but there are bugs in different places and it wastes more time for me having tabs when some very good workflows involve having numerous distinct instances of Notepad on different parts of the monitors instead. In a way where it was absolutely perfect for the longest time. It still works like that but combined with autosave you really have to check a lot to make sure the file is not already open in another instance or different tab lots of times. Or your previous message(s) pops up every time you open Notepad days or weeks later. Even though for like 40 years when you opened a new instance of Notepad, you could reliably expect a blank text window. And when you double-click on a TXT file, you want that file to open without having some other text on some other tab that came from somewhere else you might not remember that well. So it's like it has Recall already built in, the AI has not even been injected yet, and it autosaves everything you type now by default. No resemblance to a keyboard logger or anything like that, nothing to see here, nope, au contraire. I guess that's why they're going to call the next level Rewrite. I can't wait, in just like the last year, for the first time ever it's already way less usable than in W9x, but what can you expect anyway?
poulpy123 2y ago
When you have a (very very expensive) hammer, everything looks like a nail
- lynx23 2y ago
  I wonder when the environmentalists will realize what is going on right now, and start to protest AI usage in general. I was already wondering the same when the open source community started to CI every damn PR and commit, but I guess I was too optimistic with that one.
  - HPsquared 2y ago
    Windows Update is another big one, the way it makes every Windows computer spin the fans like crazy on a regular basis. Probably room for improvement there.
    - bayindirh 2y ago
      For Microsoft's credit, Windows has systems in place to install your updates when you're powered by more renewables than fossil fuels [0]. [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-is-now-carbon-aware-a53f39bc-5531-4bb1-9e78-db38d7a6df20 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-i...
      - blibble 2y ago
        maybe they could just make the software not be completely shit instead ? why does Windows take 2 minutes to decide what updates to install, then 45 minutes to install them when Debian on the same machine can do both in under 30 seconds?
        deafpolygon 2y ago
        ... *puts tin foil hat on* ... let me tell you a story...
  - 2y ago
cies 2y ago
They all need your data to train on!
jillybilly7 2y ago
Strange. Microsoft seems to struggle with the fact that they named it "Notepad" and some subset of users took this to heart and used it as a note pad, but due to backwards compatibility concerns it must never save rich text formatted files, else it could cause confusing data loss scenarios for users just trying to edit config files. Hence, the odd combination of LLM features added to a text editor that will never support rich text or rendered markdown.
- ChymeraXYZ 2y ago
  What is the reason it should not be able to support rendering markdown? The underlying files are still just plain text and if it's not .md (or whatever other extensions may make sense) it's not rendered.
demarq 2y ago
The “TURBO” of this generation
SuperNinKenDo 2y ago
Throwing AI at everything is starting to make cryptocurrency seem positively environmentally friendly. At least it serves some kind of purpose.
- mrweasel 2y ago
  It a result of a rather sad trend, which I think started with Google. Rather than going out and doing market research you just throw things against the wall, measure and see if people are using it at any significant rate. The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google have no problems just killing of things that doesn't perform to their standard (which is bad in it's own way). With Microsoft backwards compatibility is everything, so once something is in Windows, it says around for a very, very, long time. AI assistance in writing isn't a bad idea, but maybe not in Notepad. I know that this isn't they way modern Microsoft wants to do things, but exposing an API that would allow 3rd. party vendors to AI support in Windows seems like a more sensible approach. Except they'd probably have to make it accessible from Javascript to make anyone use it.
  - BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Perhaps trying random things uncovers more big opportunities than market research does. Market research tells you to breed faster horses; random things converge to combustion engines.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      According to Wikipedia [0], the development of the car concept went from 1649 to 1881. That's not exactly throwing random things and seeing what sticks. It may have not been systematic, but with the wealth of information and resources we have today, we can and should do better. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    The developers that believed in WinRT weren't so lucky with backwards compatibility. That is why outside Microsoft own employees, no one else cares anylonger about it, after the whole mess that keeps going on.
pjmlp 2y ago
One more reason to stick to Notepad++.
hasnain99 2y ago
ms copied other AI companies
masteruvpuppetz 2y ago
I hate that Win11 Notepad has so many tabs open even after you close the app. Many times, I just paste my copied text in Notepad to strip the formatting + special characters and close it after re-copying the data. Pretty efficient. Now that I open Notepad.. all my previous tabs are open asking me to close them one after the other (extra click on not so save the file) :@ so annoying
- pickledoyster 2y ago
  Does ctrl+v+shift not work anymore?
surgical_fire 2y ago
Kudos to Microsoft, they are doing everything they can to make everyone absolutely hate anything AI
jinushaun 2y ago
It makes more sense to add this to Wordpad, but didn’t they kill Wordpad in Windows 11? Keep Notepad simple.
- pdpi 2y ago
  I'm not sure how they built this thing, but it makes sense to me on the face of it: Notepad should be the thinnest wrapper possible around a simple textbox, and the generated thing they're showing should be built into the widget itself so it's exposed to all apps in the OS (much like macOS exposes emacs/readline-style shortcuts everywhere that uses a default textbox).
  - Dwedit 2y ago
    The last time they significantly improved the text box was adding in support for mixed LTR and RTL characters around Windows 2000. And arguably Windows 10 adding in the emoji IME when you hit WindowsKey + .
_1tem 2y ago
Why do writing tools have to be a feature of every app instead of an operating-system wide tool like Apple Intelligence? Makes no sense whatsoever to just "sprinkle AI everywhere" except for specialized use cases.
- diggan 2y ago
  You seem to be of the understanding that Microsoft has some sort of unified strategy that tries to optimize for user experience. Might have been true in the beginning of the company's life, but today? They've been using the "spraying and praying" strategy for the last 2 decades at least and this is just another way of applying said strategy.
- flohofwoe 2y ago
  I bet there's there's a poorly thought out directive from the company bigwigs to integrate AI into all Microsoft products, and middle management is gobbling that up to get ahead in the rat race. Visual Studio and VSCode have also become infested with little Copilot icons.
  - dfedbeef 2y ago
    (points to nose)
  - all2 2y ago
    So had jetbrains, and no matter how many times you hide the icons, they always come back.
  - joseda-hg 2y ago
    I've yet to have a good experience with copilot in Visual Studio It still surprises me to have shows stopping bugs with it, In THE first party IDE, in Windows, using pure .NET and other microsoft tooling I couldn't describe a more perfectly vacuum'ed spherical cow, and still, copilot dies randomly even after they have acknowledged the problem and made some fixes
    - 2y ago
high_na_euv 2y ago
>It’s worth noting that you’ll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it’s “powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization.” What?! What about AI PC, NPUs in e.g Lunar Lake and in general AI@Edge?
pton_xd 2y ago
"Sign in to your Microsoft account" to use... Notepad? This is not the future I wanted.
- coldpie 2y ago
  It's been pretty fascinating to watch what Microsofties have to put up with, having switched to Linux in 2007. Vista's half-assed release, Windows 8's tablet UI disaster, Windows 10's online account requirements, now all the AI crap they're shoving into Windows 11. Meanwhile I'm just over here using basically the same Arch Linux tools & XFCE environment for almost 20 years. Yes, I know, Linux isn't perfect, but it's maybe worth a look if you're fed up with using an OS that wants to exploit you instead of serve you. It's especially easy now that most things are web-based.
  - glouwbug 2y ago
    Arch has consistently proven itself to be the perfect machine for me. I go for months without a reboot even with daily package updates. 2000 line C window managers like DWM leave me more productive than windows ever has
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    I stopped using Windows and switched to Linux exclusively decades ago. But I don't get to choose what OS I use at work, so what Windows does still deeply affects me. "Just switch" is great for home machines, but for most, that's not an option at work.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      Work is for work stuff. It's someone else computer, someone else wants and needs. I don't mind if they want to feed all their data to Big Tech (On my previous work computer the only truly personal piece of data I had was my profile picture and ssh keys for my GitHub account). I don't even do web searches on work computers. If Windows is slow, I'd just bring it up to my manager and the IT dept. On my personal computers, that's a different story.
alsetmusic 2y ago
So, they went from not updating in forever, to finally updating it in some meaningful ways a couple years ago, to adding crap that no one wants pretty much right away. Too much, MS. Shoulda quit while you were ahead with tabs.
- malfist 2y ago
  Soon: with ads!
  - bityard 2y ago
    Prediction: All corporate-backed general-purpose LLMs/AIs will eventually include ads. They won't even always be obvious ads like we have on the web, sometimes they will just be product placement. Ask the AI for an example of a linked list, and it will give you one, but the sample items in the list will be Coca-Cola, Lexus, the name of the closest marijuana dispensary, etc. If anyone wonders why Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies who make gobs of money from advertising are so interested in AI, this is why. The ads will appear so "naturally" inside content that it will be impossible for a program (e.g. adblocker) to tell the difference between the content and the ad. There is NO better way to deliver an ad, short of directly injecting thoughts and memories directly into the human brain somehow.
    - ed_elliott_asc 2y ago
      I think there are already product placement laws so we should be warned at least
      - condiment 2y ago
        You’ll be warned when you accept the terms and conditions. And after the first lawsuits, there will be some fine print on the bottom of the page for you to ignore.
      - lotsofpulp 2y ago
        They must be completely toothless laws considering the amount of product placement that is easily visible. The only thing that will change is automating product placement in what used to look like organic conversation, including on HN. Now I’ll go drink a nice, cold glass of tap water.
optymizer 2y ago
Software companies want to shove AI everywhere because it's the shiny new thing. Hardware companies love it because they can finally have a way to fight the "it's good enough for email and browsing" argument to sell us more hardware.
- ActionHank 2y ago
  And yet, weirdly, MS have chosen to just make it their entire personality at this point. There has, for a number of years, been a move away from Windows to macOS and Linux for devs. I suspect this will start to accelerate because people don't want tools that are obnoxiously omnipresent. Carpenters have various ways to keep their most used tools at hand, but you don't see them wearing a charm bracelet of every tool they need.
  - sebazzz 2y ago
    It seems like every product manager (or program manager) or maybe all the way down to staff have got “incorporating AI” as some kind of KPI - on which your performance is measured.
    - daemin 2y ago
      It's as if it's the company's mission.
  - ausbah 2y ago
    i heard through the grapevine msft had laid off a number of PMs due to anticipating copilot increasing their daily productivity
    - ActionHank 2y ago
      There is a hoard of people who "work in tech" that don't work in tech. These are people who are missing valuable business insights or who are working on novel solutions and include many developers. Those are the ones who will struggle with relevance going forward. Equally, large corporations are at significant risk if the productivity of a single person increases further. If you look at the game industry, indie games are running circles around the AAA games, but this is limited to exceptional individuals or teams. Make more people individually exceptional and it's going to be real hard for big companies to eat.
dotty- 2y ago
I just wish Microsoft had a simpler mindset for their OS. Simple, privacy-first, consumer-first defaults and optional upgrades to more enhanced tools via their App Store. Imagine if instead of Windows Recall being installed and available automatically on machines, they just added Recall as an optional downloadable add-on via the App Store... I don't think it would have received nearly as much backlash.
- PittleyDunkin 2y ago
  > Simple, privacy-first, consumer-first defaults and optional upgrades to more enhanced tools via their App Store. Why would anyone use this over Ubuntu? They need something to differentiate themselves from the inexorable creep of free software.
  - dotty- 2y ago
    I don't think creating a separate tier of enhanced OS upgrades would benefit Ubuntu. Ubuntu isn't connected to a multi-billion dollar corporation. Canonical has no resources to offer a free AI-powered Notepad editor. Microsoft is connected to OpenAI, Microsoft has AI-hardware partners, and Microsoft has the in-house resources to create new drivers for new hardware/software compatibility issues. There will always be valid reasons to use Windows over Ubuntu.
    - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
      You seem to mostly be listing ways in which using windows is an active liability rather than anything consumers asked for. Granted, the drivers point is a good one.
    - gradientsrneat 2y ago
      > Ubuntu isn't connected to a multi-billion dollar corporation Technically correct but misleading. It's connected to Canonical, a multi-billion dollar private company limited by shares.
JohnFen 2y ago
Just nope. The value of notepad and paint to me are that they are simple and reasonably minimalistic. Adding features makes those sorts of programs less useful to me. Also, I can't trust any software that incorporates AI because I can't trust that my usage of that software won't be used to train AI. So this move means that I won't be using these tools anymore. Not that it matters to anyone aside from myself, of course. It's also not a huge deal to me -- I'll just start using different tools that still meet my needs.
skeledrew 2y ago
Coming soon: "To ensure users have the best experience, we will require that AI features be active by default, which requires a continuous internet connection, a logged in Microsoft account, and enabled telemetry."
- koolba 2y ago
  Before that you have to have the one where they have the “Disable” flag, but they “accidentally” ignored it.
  - michaelt 2y ago
    Disable flag? No no, the choices are "Enable" and "Maybe later"
    - LoveMortuus 2y ago
      I think it would be much easier and faster to just give the users one option. That way, they don't need to think about what they want and can focus on their work. (satire)
      - reginald78 2y ago
        We A/B tested this and found the acceptance numbers really went up.
        LoveMortuus 2y ago
        My guess would be that there's probably some correlation between lass choice and decision fatigue. Whenever I go grocery shopping it always takes me quite a while to decide which rice is worth my hard earned money and which isn't, especially because some rice makes my tiny rice cooker to start foaming all over.
      - marcosdumay 2y ago
        Some people thrive with more options. For those a [Ok] [Hell Yeah!] [Definitively!!!!1!!] set is the perfect fit.
JohnClark1337 2y ago
[dead]
ec_gv 2y ago
[dead]
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/06/new-ai-experiences-for-paint-and-notepad-begin-rolling-out-to-windows-insiders/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/06/new-ai-...
jl6 2y ago
Microsoft's neglect of Notepad paved the way for Notepad++. Now they're uplifting Notepad. Perhaps this will create room for a Notepad--.
- jonwinstanley 2y ago
  Genuinely agree! Can't my computer just refrain from sending everything I do to the Internet??
  - fhfjfk 2y ago
    It's Microsoft's computer, not yours.
    - inversetelecine 2y ago
      "My PC" renamed to "This PC" awhile ago, afterall.
      - deafpolygon 2y ago
        It used to be "My Computer"
      - biofox 2y ago
        Didn't even notice that change until you pointed it out. I hate it.
  - amelius 2y ago
    Maybe we'll see more people moving to Linux.
- Izkata 2y ago
  A project exists with that name but seems to be the opposite: https://github.com/cxasm/notepad-- https://github.com/cxasm/notepad-- https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-dd/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-dd/
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
dagmx 2y ago
It’s disappointing that this isn’t just a system wide functionality for text boxes like it is on macOS, and that it requires signing in at all. Having it be just inside notepad or specific apps means you also need to train people to change their workflows or context switch to use it.
jonwinstanley 2y ago
Soon there won't be any safe place on Windows to copy and paste some random text/password/key that I don't want to get uploaded to some cloud service, or screenshotted and "analysed".
- okdood64 2y ago
  I don't understand why people still use Windows; especially after the whole Recall debacle.
  - t0bia_s 2y ago
    Because when you are working in SW that is not supported by linux, you don't have option (macOS is not alternative for me), ie Adobe.
- nicce 2y ago
  Soon it is not safe to boot Windows unless you are prepared to exterminate all the used hardware.
  - dormento 2y ago
    Its so sad, windows used to be a production ready system in the early 2000s.
- bityard 2y ago
  Since Windows is closed source, you have no way of knowing that this isn't happening today.
  - nicce 2y ago
    You can since you can still inspect the traffic. However, it is like finding needle in a haystack since there is quite much of traffic.
    - pantulis 2y ago
osigurdson 2y ago
It is hilarious how Microsoft suddenly re-discovered Notepad after 20+ years.
- qwerpy 2y ago
  A long time ago (in the 2000s) I was interviewed by a guy who was the maintainer for notepad. It was a part time job. Now I’m sure there’s a whole team around it with multiple devs, a designer, a product manager, a program manager, and now with AI, legal has got to be involved.
glouwbug 2y ago
I like how currently on LinkedIn there’s a feature to use AI writing assistance to help land your next job. Like if I can’t write how am I ever going to work a job
- shermantanktop 2y ago
  With AI, of course!
  - userbinator 2y ago
    ....and then the AI will be good enough to do your job for you.
- caseymarquis 2y ago
  I recently used ChatGPT canvas to improve a friend's resume. I had managed him in the past, and he is great to work with. However, from his resume you would never know it. I did 3 hours worth of editing and improvement in 5 minutes. I gave rambling descriptions of what he had done when working for me and why it was impressive, and GPT translated this into resume speak almost instantly. I then gave some vague suggestions for improvement, made a couple minor edits to buff off the AI veneer, and viola, he had a professional resume that will help him do great work in his next position.
  - tartoran 2y ago
    Seriously, a use case where LLMs really shine: bullshit padding. It's quite amazing to be able to turn ramble into coherent text. The less obvious tax is that if you don't put effort you will never be able to learn how to write and that will most likely affect thinking too. Writing will remain a valuable tool for improving thinking though, but likely for a lot fewer people.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      I suspect we'll start to see people asking for more raw bullet-points for certain communications, because all the text they used to use to guess engagement/thought/investment/care is debased from easy counterfeiting. In some cases that'll remove something that was always a questionable waste of time, and in other cases it'll represent a real loss of information.
anothername12 2y ago
I’m surprised Windows isn’t given away for free at this point.
- bitwize 2y ago
  It kind of is for individuals. They don't bother punishing you too hard for pirating it anymore. I can't change my wallpaper unless I go legit? Oooo, I'm so scared! Microsoft remembers Bill Gates's mantra that piracy at the individual level actually gets you an audience who will then sign on the dotted line once the big-money deals -- enterprise license contracts -- need to be made.
J_Shelby_J 2y ago
And they added image gen to paint. Neat, but there a bunch of really basic operations they could of added to make it an actual daily driver.
elzbardico 2y ago
It is getting AI. Text Editing is something Notepad will get in a future release, around 2065.
YetAnotherNick 2y ago
Genuine question, what are these companies hoping for in return of giving this for free? Not just giving it, in fact pushing it hard. Do they want users to get addicted now and start charging them later? Do they want to increase Windows retention? Will they push subtle ads?
AlienRobot 2y ago
You laugh, but there is nothing as good as old Notepad on Linux. Every single built-in "basic" text editor of every single distro comes with syntax highlighting, line numbers, tabs, etc. I just want a rectangle to type text into. Notepad is turning into what Linux text editors already are: too complicated.
- skydhash 2y ago
  What about Ed, the standard text editor?
  - AlienRobot 2y ago
    That's a terminal program. I only consider graphical applications to be applications.
    - skydhash 2y ago
      I think the basic text widget of all the toolkit support text attributes (color, styles,…) and as the solutions for syntax highlighting and other stuff existed already, it was not a big stretch to add them instead of having two editors (the first user was the programmer)
      - AlienRobot 2y ago
        Ah, I guess that's the problem then! The first user shouldn't be the programmer :-)
- Riverheart 2y ago
  I’ve always been satisfied with Leafpad as a Notepad equivalent. No fluff, just a rectangle for dumping text.
- akimbostrawman 2y ago
  GNOME text editor is just that.
revskill 2y ago
So when will mspaint ? Copy a text then paste as an image
jimt1234 2y ago
Et tu, Notepad? Seriously, no one writes with Notepad. It's just for quick copy-paste text manipulation. That's it. No need for gen-AI. I used Notepad to make simple HTML pages back in 1995 - maybe, two dozen lines of "<h1>" and "<blink>". That's the most text I've ever written in Notepad.
- terminalbraid 2y ago
  I assure you there are still many devs that use notepad regularly to write horrible code.
  - floren 2y ago
    I was assigned a partner in my robotics class that used Wordpad to write Java code.
  - autoexec 2y ago
    Smart devs write their horrible code in Notepad++
  - hnrodey 2y ago
    As much as I'd like to believe this isn't true...
- metalliqaz 2y ago
  "need" has nothing to do with it
- RajT88 2y ago
  I write with Notepad. No distractions, no temptation to add anything but text. I write musings, short stories, song lyrics, etc. and keep an archive of all these text files to reflect on later. Sometimes I write notes and letters to my future self. All notepad.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
mbg721 2y ago
I use Notepad to stop Excel from thinking it's smarter than me. "Yes, those leading zeroes are important." This is something of a step backward.
photochemsyn 2y ago
Where's my open-source vim plugin for this purpose? Anyone know?
markus_zhang 2y ago
I guess MSFT sees everyone eating lunch with ChatGPT and other AI apis and think: "I can do it too!".
arresin 2y ago
> It’s worth noting that you’ll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it’s “powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization.” They are truly data leeches trying to lap at any cut you might have for a bit of tasty data.
- stewx 2y ago
  I presume this is for applying rate-limiting, so their API doesn't get utterly abused
  - rendaw 2y ago
    And for vacuuming up personal data, because why not both.
    - ruszki 2y ago
      It’s pretty obvious after their data grab with the new Outlook. They destroyed the built-in app which I used all the time just to try to get all of my emails.
      - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
        > It’s pretty obvious after their data grab with the new Outlook. What did they do this time?
        kotaKat 2y ago
        The New Outlook(tm) is an Edge Webview to the cloud. In the stupidest twist of fate, you cannot open Outlook offline, at all. There is no concept of "offline" in the New Outlook. I assume this is Microsoft forcing away the issues of the past of 50+GB OST files by making Outlook a glorified webmail client instead. Oh, and Microsoft Teams? You can open that offline and it's got a full cached experience. Innovation at its finest!
        password4321 2y ago
petabyt 2y ago
At the rate that windows is getting worse and Linux is getting better, I wonder when the tipping point will be.
verytrivial 2y ago
I'm not even complaining anymore. I'm just ceasing to use this Ai garbage and ceasing to deal with people who spruik it. And if you're wondering what "spruik" means, Google will give you an Ai summary which is subtly wrong and contradicted by the first actual search result it list directly below it.
pornel 2y ago
We haven't had such FOMO-induced self-destruction since Google+.
- busymom0 2y ago
  What destroyed Google+? Curious.
  - pornel 2y ago
    When "social" was a hot new thing, Google suddenly wanted to be Facebook, and started making all of their products part of Google+, whether it made sense or not. Google+ required having a public profile with a real name. Gmail/calendar/docs users who were tricked into activating plus, but didn't comply, got banned or forced to make a real name profile. Merging of Hangouts, Orkut, Blogger, YouTube comments, and Play Store reviews into the same "social network" made no sense. It was a blatant move to inflate user numbers, at cost of annoying users of the other services, who didn't sign up for a me-too Facebook. That was the first time when Google became uncool.
A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
Well, at least now it will have a semi-valid reason to connect to the internet. It is still bonkers, but a different kind of more acceptable kind of bonkers.
ramassnel1 2y ago
I don't know but adding A.I to notepad makes me wanna use VIM more
rqtwteye 2y ago
This seems to be a common trend everywhere. Instead of improving core functionality they add the latest buzzword tech, no matter it make sense or not. I am user of GaiaGPS to plan outdoors trips. Same there: the app is good but has some problems. Instead of fixing the problems they added social functionality which nobody really wants.
- brianjlogan 2y ago
  This is your tried and true. C level read a magazine, mandatory implementation order, engineer ticks the checkbox and waits for hype to pass so they can remove it.
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    C level read a magazine, mandatory implementation order A magazine would be an improvement. I worked in a place where the owners were very susceptible to airport billboard ads. Every time they came back from a trip, we would brace for change.
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      A scary version of this is driven home to me when I go to Washington DC and see all of the very expensive billboards at commuter stations near the Pentagon advertising fighter jets and other military equipment. It scares me every time because they wouldn't be splashing out the big bucks for those billboards if they weren't effective, and I absolutely don't want the military (or any other entity engaging in major expenditures) to be making those decisions based on billboards.
      - zh3 2y ago
        AKA the Beltway Bandits [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandit
    - bombcar 2y ago
      > I worked in a place where the owners were very susceptible to airport billboard ads. This explains why airports are entirely covered in ads that seem to be aimed at C-level execs only (nobody else gives a shit).
trentnix 2y ago
“But our keylogger is a feature!”, they explained.
gigel82 2y ago
Why cloud? Rewriting some text is definitely something a local LLM can do; they have NPUs on the Copilot PCs so why not use that? So far the only feature I've seen them talking about for the NPUs on the Copilot PCs is image generation in Paint. Something feels off here.
- BobbyTables2 2y ago
  Why not cloud for everything? They really want YOUR DATA!
indulona 2y ago
people already forgot that microsoft said years ago that they will make windows into a service and there will be no new version, just constant updates. this is what it looks like. ZERO privacy. you'll own nothing and be happy.
stainablesteel 2y ago
this sounds like a terrible idea, simple products should remain simple
christosjesus 2y ago
We forget how to speak. AI creates a real Tower of Babel.
daemin 2y ago
It seems not enough people are using AI features and therefore it is being put everywhere so that people can't help but use AI features. Instead of realising that people don't want these features and actively disable or avoid them, they've come to the conclusion that they're not being used because they're prominent enough, so they are being put everywhere so they cannot be missed. Windows is no longer a Personal Computer Operating System that you can just use.
- akira2501 2y ago
  They spent all this money on training. Massive amounts of one time and recurring costs. They have no idea how to write it all down. They never planned that they might have to. And people wonder why some of us were so insistent on not allowing this garbage pile of technologies to be open labeled 'AI.'
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
TheCleric 2y ago
Stuff like this is why I refuse to use Windows anymore.
jgalt212 2y ago
I don't blame Satya, I blame the foaming at the mouth AI-frenzied investor class. If these folks thought a second about this tech and tried to use it in a number of domains, they would not be clamoring to AI all the things.
bigs 2y ago
So, with all the ads, AI, “telemetry” etc when does someone fork Win XP, bring it up to 2024 level security and we all move to that?
ngneer 2y ago
Well, they already lost me as a user when they transitioned to an MDI interface. My only use for notepad.exe these days is to demonstrate exploits.
SmartestUnknown 2y ago
To my eyes, the original text in the example is much more readable than the LLM suggested rephrasing.
ankurdhama 2y ago
If you listen to Satya Nadella various talks/interviews you will realize that he think AI is the next major platform and we know MS lost the last major platform i.e mobile. So in his vision he wants MS to be the major player in this next platform shift and the way they are doing it is by putting AI in every nook and corner of their OS and apps. The only issue is that AI (in its current form) is NOT a platform but more of a "user interface based on natural language".
widea 2y ago
Edlin?
evanjrowley 2y ago
Dear god please forgive humanity for these horrible abominations
samuelec 2y ago
Cool! now windoz users got both a corporate spyware and a new ads tool in any possible place
graypegg 2y ago
I do not know much about the internal workings of Windows, but why is this not implemented as a system wide action? Are they really implementing "AI Tools" in every application that uses text... individually? If this was in the context menu, along with Cut, Copy and Paste, you would be getting AI integration for free on every application that renders a text box widget. I mean... spell check is implemented like that right? They seem to be pitching this as a way to correct or improve text so why not build on that? I'm not even a fan of this sort of generative AI "type whatever" tool, or I at least find it to normally be inadequate. But if they're going to do this AI pivot in Windows anyway, the choice of implementation here seems short sighted.
stuckkeys 2y ago
Wth is the point of this? Are they trying to get data from every source they can? This can mean one thing: they want to get eid of openAI in years to come so they are collecting everything they can.

281 points by redbell 2y ago

Does this mean its going to bloated and slow to open. I want notepad to be absolutely instant. Even calculator is getting slower to open now. I want these simple apps to be fast af.

disqard 2y ago

Is it safe to say we've crested the peak of the Gartner Hype Cycle for AI? I've seen several essays/posts describing "AI Fatigue" recently.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cj 2y ago
Here's a Google Trend graph of the last 5 years for "AI" (and "crypto" for comparison). https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&geo=US&q=crypto,ai&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&ge... At least based on search volume, we're still on an upward swing.
- adra 2y ago
  I'm sure there's some fascinating research to be discovered for why the most crypto of the US states are Nevada, Florida, Hawaii, and Alaska.

fecal_henge 2y ago

First tabbed documents and now this!

Refusing23 2y ago

i dont think we need that

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Sends everything you write to Microsoft.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
esperent 2y ago
Unless and until I see a clear privacy police analyzed by a lawyer, stating categorically that this doesn't happen, I think it's wise to assume that you are correct here.
- jpnc 2y ago
  There's a reason Windows went from 'MyComputer' to 'This PC'.
  - mrob 2y ago
    While it's possible they meant something nefarious, I think the goal was probably just to prevent confusion around shared computers. Such confusion might seem unlikely, but when your market is as big as Microsoft's even unlikely things happen all the time.
  - diftraku 2y ago
    "Our PC"
DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
Kinda defeats the point of “AI PCs” then…
- deprecative 2y ago
  You've got it reversed. AI PCs are just SPAs. You offload the workload to the client then send the resulting payload back.

sethammons 2y ago

Notepad and plain text is the last place I want AI. I just want a place to type and paste non-formatted (outside of whitespace) text.

Auracle 2y ago
There’s probably a way to turn it off but I hate how it auto opens the last file now.
- aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
  The addition of tabs to Notepad has made me stop using it entirely. My entire workflow around it was having separate windows for each document that I could move and close freely. Having an all-in-one-place Notepad filled with the ghosts of API tokens past is precisely the opposite of what I needed.
  - zigman1 2y ago
    But you can still open multiple windows?
    - aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
      It doesn't open in new windows by default, which was enough for me to stop using it.
      - EasyMark 2y ago
        I think it takes maybe 3 clicks to set up "old style notepad". I don't understand the harsh criticism? I don't use it myself since I have a sublime license, and st3 opens up instantly, but I don't think the new changes to notepad are the end of the world.
        aithrowawaycomm 2y ago
        I don’t understand why anything I said is a “harsh criticism” or “the end of the world.” I don’t actually care about Notepad! It might have taken 3 clicks to set it up, but it took zero clicks to say “this is a change I didn’t want and I don’t care enough to learn how to fix it, I’ll just use something else.”

wruza 2y ago

https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html https://www.flos-freeware.ch/notepad2.html if you feel threatened or got tired of encoding/newline issues. Works as a drop-in replacement (replaces .exe). https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad2/code/HEAD/tree/ https://sourceforge.net/p/notepad2/code/HEAD/tree/ for source code.

bakugo 2y ago

At this point I wouldn't even bat an eye if someone tried to sell me an AI toilet that uses an image recognition model to analyze my bowel movements.

fragmede 2y ago
Adult Swim did it first: https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ https://youtu.be/DJklHwoYgBQ
GreekPete 2y ago
I just bought a washing machine that has an AI wash mode.
xarope 2y ago
I think those exist already...!
lynx23 2y ago
I would be surprised if Toylet-companies weren't already working on something like that.
- inversetelecine 2y ago
  Account and internet connection required. Now with "Ads while you go" technology.
weikju 2y ago
These are in the work [0] for a few years already. [1] [0] https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/toilet-camera-uses-ai-to-analyze-pics-of-poop-and-measure-your-gut-health https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/news/toilet-camera-uses-a... [1] https://today.duke.edu/2021/05/smart-toilet-uses-artificial-intelligence-monitor-bowel-health https://today.duke.edu/2021/05/smart-toilet-uses-artificial-... (from before the LLM hype cycle, even!)

ch1kkenm4ss4 2y ago

They should also convert it to Electron.

bigstrat2003 2y ago
Calm down, Satan.

lintfordpickle 2y ago

Signing in to MS to use notepad? Nah I don't think so

rebolek 2y ago

what about MS Paint? Can it get AI assistant to create shitty pixel art? Edit: Oh. It does too.

johnisgood 2y ago
Oh Lord, MS Paint has AI, too?

sebtron 2y ago

A while ago I wrote about my experience using Windows for work after 10 years of being a Linux-only user [1]. One of the positive notes I had was: > As a positive note, the default text editor Notepad is nice and lightweight, a good piece of software. Unfortunately, they screwed it up with Windows 11. And apparently they are doubling down on this. [1] https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-desktop/ https://sebastiano.tronto.net/blog/2023-01-28-windows-deskto...

pxoe 2y ago
on windows 11 it's still lightweight and snappy though, with tabs, autosave, dark theme and design that fits in and doesn't stick out like a sore thumb
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I disagree. I mean, it could be worse, but notepad has become feature-laden enough that it almost eliminates the usefulness of the program. I may as well use a full text editor.
  - fuzzfactor 2y ago
    I know what you mean. I understand why people would like it, but there are bugs in different places and it wastes more time for me having tabs when some very good workflows involve having numerous distinct instances of Notepad on different parts of the monitors instead. In a way where it was absolutely perfect for the longest time. It still works like that but combined with autosave you really have to check a lot to make sure the file is not already open in another instance or different tab lots of times. Or your previous message(s) pops up every time you open Notepad days or weeks later. Even though for like 40 years when you opened a new instance of Notepad, you could reliably expect a blank text window. And when you double-click on a TXT file, you want that file to open without having some other text on some other tab that came from somewhere else you might not remember that well. So it's like it has Recall already built in, the AI has not even been injected yet, and it autosaves everything you type now by default. No resemblance to a keyboard logger or anything like that, nothing to see here, nope, au contraire. I guess that's why they're going to call the next level Rewrite. I can't wait, in just like the last year, for the first time ever it's already way less usable than in W9x, but what can you expect anyway?

poulpy123 2y ago

When you have a (very very expensive) hammer, everything looks like a nail

lynx23 2y ago
I wonder when the environmentalists will realize what is going on right now, and start to protest AI usage in general. I was already wondering the same when the open source community started to CI every damn PR and commit, but I guess I was too optimistic with that one.
- HPsquared 2y ago
  Windows Update is another big one, the way it makes every Windows computer spin the fans like crazy on a regular basis. Probably room for improvement there.
  - bayindirh 2y ago
    For Microsoft's credit, Windows has systems in place to install your updates when you're powered by more renewables than fossil fuels [0]. [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-is-now-carbon-aware-a53f39bc-5531-4bb1-9e78-db38d7a6df20 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-update-i...
    - blibble 2y ago
      maybe they could just make the software not be completely shit instead ? why does Windows take 2 minutes to decide what updates to install, then 45 minutes to install them when Debian on the same machine can do both in under 30 seconds?
      - deafpolygon 2y ago
        ... *puts tin foil hat on* ... let me tell you a story...
- 2y ago

cies 2y ago

They all need your data to train on!

jillybilly7 2y ago

Strange. Microsoft seems to struggle with the fact that they named it "Notepad" and some subset of users took this to heart and used it as a note pad, but due to backwards compatibility concerns it must never save rich text formatted files, else it could cause confusing data loss scenarios for users just trying to edit config files. Hence, the odd combination of LLM features added to a text editor that will never support rich text or rendered markdown.

ChymeraXYZ 2y ago
What is the reason it should not be able to support rendering markdown? The underlying files are still just plain text and if it's not .md (or whatever other extensions may make sense) it's not rendered.

demarq 2y ago

The “TURBO” of this generation

SuperNinKenDo 2y ago

Throwing AI at everything is starting to make cryptocurrency seem positively environmentally friendly. At least it serves some kind of purpose.

mrweasel 2y ago
It a result of a rather sad trend, which I think started with Google. Rather than going out and doing market research you just throw things against the wall, measure and see if people are using it at any significant rate. The difference between Google and Microsoft is that Google have no problems just killing of things that doesn't perform to their standard (which is bad in it's own way). With Microsoft backwards compatibility is everything, so once something is in Windows, it says around for a very, very, long time. AI assistance in writing isn't a bad idea, but maybe not in Notepad. I know that this isn't they way modern Microsoft wants to do things, but exposing an API that would allow 3rd. party vendors to AI support in Windows seems like a more sensible approach. Except they'd probably have to make it accessible from Javascript to make anyone use it.
- BeFlatXIII 2y ago
  Perhaps trying random things uncovers more big opportunities than market research does. Market research tells you to breed faster horses; random things converge to combustion engines.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    According to Wikipedia [0], the development of the car concept went from 1649 to 1881. That's not exactly throwing random things and seeing what sticks. It may have not been systematic, but with the wealth of information and resources we have today, we can and should do better. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_automobile
- pjmlp 2y ago
  The developers that believed in WinRT weren't so lucky with backwards compatibility. That is why outside Microsoft own employees, no one else cares anylonger about it, after the whole mess that keeps going on.

pjmlp 2y ago

One more reason to stick to Notepad++.

hasnain99 2y ago

ms copied other AI companies

masteruvpuppetz 2y ago

I hate that Win11 Notepad has so many tabs open even after you close the app. Many times, I just paste my copied text in Notepad to strip the formatting + special characters and close it after re-copying the data. Pretty efficient. Now that I open Notepad.. all my previous tabs are open asking me to close them one after the other (extra click on not so save the file) :@ so annoying

pickledoyster 2y ago
Does ctrl+v+shift not work anymore?

surgical_fire 2y ago

Kudos to Microsoft, they are doing everything they can to make everyone absolutely hate anything AI

jinushaun 2y ago

It makes more sense to add this to Wordpad, but didn’t they kill Wordpad in Windows 11? Keep Notepad simple.

pdpi 2y ago
I'm not sure how they built this thing, but it makes sense to me on the face of it: Notepad should be the thinnest wrapper possible around a simple textbox, and the generated thing they're showing should be built into the widget itself so it's exposed to all apps in the OS (much like macOS exposes emacs/readline-style shortcuts everywhere that uses a default textbox).
- Dwedit 2y ago
  The last time they significantly improved the text box was adding in support for mixed LTR and RTL characters around Windows 2000. And arguably Windows 10 adding in the emoji IME when you hit WindowsKey + .

_1tem 2y ago

Why do writing tools have to be a feature of every app instead of an operating-system wide tool like Apple Intelligence? Makes no sense whatsoever to just "sprinkle AI everywhere" except for specialized use cases.

diggan 2y ago
You seem to be of the understanding that Microsoft has some sort of unified strategy that tries to optimize for user experience. Might have been true in the beginning of the company's life, but today? They've been using the "spraying and praying" strategy for the last 2 decades at least and this is just another way of applying said strategy.
flohofwoe 2y ago
I bet there's there's a poorly thought out directive from the company bigwigs to integrate AI into all Microsoft products, and middle management is gobbling that up to get ahead in the rat race. Visual Studio and VSCode have also become infested with little Copilot icons.
- dfedbeef 2y ago
  (points to nose)
- all2 2y ago
  So had jetbrains, and no matter how many times you hide the icons, they always come back.
- joseda-hg 2y ago
  I've yet to have a good experience with copilot in Visual Studio It still surprises me to have shows stopping bugs with it, In THE first party IDE, in Windows, using pure .NET and other microsoft tooling I couldn't describe a more perfectly vacuum'ed spherical cow, and still, copilot dies randomly even after they have acknowledged the problem and made some fixes
  - 2y ago

high_na_euv 2y ago

>It’s worth noting that you’ll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it’s “powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization.” What?! What about AI PC, NPUs in e.g Lunar Lake and in general AI@Edge?

pton_xd 2y ago

"Sign in to your Microsoft account" to use... Notepad? This is not the future I wanted.

coldpie 2y ago
It's been pretty fascinating to watch what Microsofties have to put up with, having switched to Linux in 2007. Vista's half-assed release, Windows 8's tablet UI disaster, Windows 10's online account requirements, now all the AI crap they're shoving into Windows 11. Meanwhile I'm just over here using basically the same Arch Linux tools & XFCE environment for almost 20 years. Yes, I know, Linux isn't perfect, but it's maybe worth a look if you're fed up with using an OS that wants to exploit you instead of serve you. It's especially easy now that most things are web-based.
- glouwbug 2y ago
  Arch has consistently proven itself to be the perfect machine for me. I go for months without a reboot even with daily package updates. 2000 line C window managers like DWM leave me more productive than windows ever has
- JohnFen 2y ago
  I stopped using Windows and switched to Linux exclusively decades ago. But I don't get to choose what OS I use at work, so what Windows does still deeply affects me. "Just switch" is great for home machines, but for most, that's not an option at work.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    Work is for work stuff. It's someone else computer, someone else wants and needs. I don't mind if they want to feed all their data to Big Tech (On my previous work computer the only truly personal piece of data I had was my profile picture and ssh keys for my GitHub account). I don't even do web searches on work computers. If Windows is slow, I'd just bring it up to my manager and the IT dept. On my personal computers, that's a different story.

alsetmusic 2y ago

So, they went from not updating in forever, to finally updating it in some meaningful ways a couple years ago, to adding crap that no one wants pretty much right away. Too much, MS. Shoulda quit while you were ahead with tabs.

malfist 2y ago
Soon: with ads!
- bityard 2y ago
  Prediction: All corporate-backed general-purpose LLMs/AIs will eventually include ads. They won't even always be obvious ads like we have on the web, sometimes they will just be product placement. Ask the AI for an example of a linked list, and it will give you one, but the sample items in the list will be Coca-Cola, Lexus, the name of the closest marijuana dispensary, etc. If anyone wonders why Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and other tech companies who make gobs of money from advertising are so interested in AI, this is why. The ads will appear so "naturally" inside content that it will be impossible for a program (e.g. adblocker) to tell the difference between the content and the ad. There is NO better way to deliver an ad, short of directly injecting thoughts and memories directly into the human brain somehow.
  - ed_elliott_asc 2y ago
    I think there are already product placement laws so we should be warned at least
    - condiment 2y ago
      You’ll be warned when you accept the terms and conditions. And after the first lawsuits, there will be some fine print on the bottom of the page for you to ignore.
    - lotsofpulp 2y ago
      They must be completely toothless laws considering the amount of product placement that is easily visible. The only thing that will change is automating product placement in what used to look like organic conversation, including on HN. Now I’ll go drink a nice, cold glass of tap water.

optymizer 2y ago

Software companies want to shove AI everywhere because it's the shiny new thing. Hardware companies love it because they can finally have a way to fight the "it's good enough for email and browsing" argument to sell us more hardware.

ActionHank 2y ago
And yet, weirdly, MS have chosen to just make it their entire personality at this point. There has, for a number of years, been a move away from Windows to macOS and Linux for devs. I suspect this will start to accelerate because people don't want tools that are obnoxiously omnipresent. Carpenters have various ways to keep their most used tools at hand, but you don't see them wearing a charm bracelet of every tool they need.
- sebazzz 2y ago
  It seems like every product manager (or program manager) or maybe all the way down to staff have got “incorporating AI” as some kind of KPI - on which your performance is measured.
  - daemin 2y ago
    It's as if it's the company's mission.
- ausbah 2y ago
  i heard through the grapevine msft had laid off a number of PMs due to anticipating copilot increasing their daily productivity
  - ActionHank 2y ago
    There is a hoard of people who "work in tech" that don't work in tech. These are people who are missing valuable business insights or who are working on novel solutions and include many developers. Those are the ones who will struggle with relevance going forward. Equally, large corporations are at significant risk if the productivity of a single person increases further. If you look at the game industry, indie games are running circles around the AAA games, but this is limited to exceptional individuals or teams. Make more people individually exceptional and it's going to be real hard for big companies to eat.

dotty- 2y ago

I just wish Microsoft had a simpler mindset for their OS. Simple, privacy-first, consumer-first defaults and optional upgrades to more enhanced tools via their App Store. Imagine if instead of Windows Recall being installed and available automatically on machines, they just added Recall as an optional downloadable add-on via the App Store... I don't think it would have received nearly as much backlash.

PittleyDunkin 2y ago
> Simple, privacy-first, consumer-first defaults and optional upgrades to more enhanced tools via their App Store. Why would anyone use this over Ubuntu? They need something to differentiate themselves from the inexorable creep of free software.
- dotty- 2y ago
  I don't think creating a separate tier of enhanced OS upgrades would benefit Ubuntu. Ubuntu isn't connected to a multi-billion dollar corporation. Canonical has no resources to offer a free AI-powered Notepad editor. Microsoft is connected to OpenAI, Microsoft has AI-hardware partners, and Microsoft has the in-house resources to create new drivers for new hardware/software compatibility issues. There will always be valid reasons to use Windows over Ubuntu.
  - PittleyDunkin 2y ago
    You seem to mostly be listing ways in which using windows is an active liability rather than anything consumers asked for. Granted, the drivers point is a good one.
  - gradientsrneat 2y ago
    > Ubuntu isn't connected to a multi-billion dollar corporation Technically correct but misleading. It's connected to Canonical, a multi-billion dollar private company limited by shares.

JohnFen 2y ago

Just nope. The value of notepad and paint to me are that they are simple and reasonably minimalistic. Adding features makes those sorts of programs less useful to me. Also, I can't trust any software that incorporates AI because I can't trust that my usage of that software won't be used to train AI. So this move means that I won't be using these tools anymore. Not that it matters to anyone aside from myself, of course. It's also not a huge deal to me -- I'll just start using different tools that still meet my needs.

skeledrew 2y ago

Coming soon: "To ensure users have the best experience, we will require that AI features be active by default, which requires a continuous internet connection, a logged in Microsoft account, and enabled telemetry."

koolba 2y ago
Before that you have to have the one where they have the “Disable” flag, but they “accidentally” ignored it.
- michaelt 2y ago
  Disable flag? No no, the choices are "Enable" and "Maybe later"
  - LoveMortuus 2y ago
    I think it would be much easier and faster to just give the users one option. That way, they don't need to think about what they want and can focus on their work. (satire)
    - reginald78 2y ago
      We A/B tested this and found the acceptance numbers really went up.
      - LoveMortuus 2y ago
        My guess would be that there's probably some correlation between lass choice and decision fatigue. Whenever I go grocery shopping it always takes me quite a while to decide which rice is worth my hard earned money and which isn't, especially because some rice makes my tiny rice cooker to start foaming all over.
    - marcosdumay 2y ago
      Some people thrive with more options. For those a [Ok] [Hell Yeah!] [Definitively!!!!1!!] set is the perfect fit.

JohnClark1337 2y ago

[dead]

ec_gv 2y ago

[dead]

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Source: https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/06/new-ai-experiences-for-paint-and-notepad-begin-rolling-out-to-windows-insiders/ https://blogs.windows.com/windows-insider/2024/11/06/new-ai-...

jl6 2y ago

Microsoft's neglect of Notepad paved the way for Notepad++. Now they're uplifting Notepad. Perhaps this will create room for a Notepad--.

jonwinstanley 2y ago
Genuinely agree! Can't my computer just refrain from sending everything I do to the Internet??
- fhfjfk 2y ago
  It's Microsoft's computer, not yours.
  - inversetelecine 2y ago
    "My PC" renamed to "This PC" awhile ago, afterall.
    - deafpolygon 2y ago
      It used to be "My Computer"
    - biofox 2y ago
      Didn't even notice that change until you pointed it out. I hate it.
- amelius 2y ago
  Maybe we'll see more people moving to Linux.
Izkata 2y ago
A project exists with that name but seems to be the opposite: https://github.com/cxasm/notepad-- https://github.com/cxasm/notepad-- https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-dd/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/notepad-dd/

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

dagmx 2y ago

It’s disappointing that this isn’t just a system wide functionality for text boxes like it is on macOS, and that it requires signing in at all. Having it be just inside notepad or specific apps means you also need to train people to change their workflows or context switch to use it.

jonwinstanley 2y ago

Soon there won't be any safe place on Windows to copy and paste some random text/password/key that I don't want to get uploaded to some cloud service, or screenshotted and "analysed".

okdood64 2y ago
I don't understand why people still use Windows; especially after the whole Recall debacle.
- t0bia_s 2y ago
  Because when you are working in SW that is not supported by linux, you don't have option (macOS is not alternative for me), ie Adobe.
nicce 2y ago
Soon it is not safe to boot Windows unless you are prepared to exterminate all the used hardware.
- dormento 2y ago
  Its so sad, windows used to be a production ready system in the early 2000s.
bityard 2y ago
Since Windows is closed source, you have no way of knowing that this isn't happening today.
- nicce 2y ago
  You can since you can still inspect the traffic. However, it is like finding needle in a haystack since there is quite much of traffic.
  - pantulis 2y ago

osigurdson 2y ago

It is hilarious how Microsoft suddenly re-discovered Notepad after 20+ years.

qwerpy 2y ago
A long time ago (in the 2000s) I was interviewed by a guy who was the maintainer for notepad. It was a part time job. Now I’m sure there’s a whole team around it with multiple devs, a designer, a product manager, a program manager, and now with AI, legal has got to be involved.

glouwbug 2y ago

I like how currently on LinkedIn there’s a feature to use AI writing assistance to help land your next job. Like if I can’t write how am I ever going to work a job

shermantanktop 2y ago
With AI, of course!
- userbinator 2y ago
  ....and then the AI will be good enough to do your job for you.
caseymarquis 2y ago
I recently used ChatGPT canvas to improve a friend's resume. I had managed him in the past, and he is great to work with. However, from his resume you would never know it. I did 3 hours worth of editing and improvement in 5 minutes. I gave rambling descriptions of what he had done when working for me and why it was impressive, and GPT translated this into resume speak almost instantly. I then gave some vague suggestions for improvement, made a couple minor edits to buff off the AI veneer, and viola, he had a professional resume that will help him do great work in his next position.
- tartoran 2y ago
  Seriously, a use case where LLMs really shine: bullshit padding. It's quite amazing to be able to turn ramble into coherent text. The less obvious tax is that if you don't put effort you will never be able to learn how to write and that will most likely affect thinking too. Writing will remain a valuable tool for improving thinking though, but likely for a lot fewer people.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    I suspect we'll start to see people asking for more raw bullet-points for certain communications, because all the text they used to use to guess engagement/thought/investment/care is debased from easy counterfeiting. In some cases that'll remove something that was always a questionable waste of time, and in other cases it'll represent a real loss of information.

anothername12 2y ago

I’m surprised Windows isn’t given away for free at this point.

bitwize 2y ago
It kind of is for individuals. They don't bother punishing you too hard for pirating it anymore. I can't change my wallpaper unless I go legit? Oooo, I'm so scared! Microsoft remembers Bill Gates's mantra that piracy at the individual level actually gets you an audience who will then sign on the dotted line once the big-money deals -- enterprise license contracts -- need to be made.

J_Shelby_J 2y ago

And they added image gen to paint. Neat, but there a bunch of really basic operations they could of added to make it an actual daily driver.

elzbardico 2y ago

It is getting AI. Text Editing is something Notepad will get in a future release, around 2065.

YetAnotherNick 2y ago

Genuine question, what are these companies hoping for in return of giving this for free? Not just giving it, in fact pushing it hard. Do they want users to get addicted now and start charging them later? Do they want to increase Windows retention? Will they push subtle ads?

AlienRobot 2y ago

You laugh, but there is nothing as good as old Notepad on Linux. Every single built-in "basic" text editor of every single distro comes with syntax highlighting, line numbers, tabs, etc. I just want a rectangle to type text into. Notepad is turning into what Linux text editors already are: too complicated.

skydhash 2y ago
What about Ed, the standard text editor?
- AlienRobot 2y ago
  That's a terminal program. I only consider graphical applications to be applications.
  - skydhash 2y ago
    I think the basic text widget of all the toolkit support text attributes (color, styles,…) and as the solutions for syntax highlighting and other stuff existed already, it was not a big stretch to add them instead of having two editors (the first user was the programmer)
    - AlienRobot 2y ago
      Ah, I guess that's the problem then! The first user shouldn't be the programmer :-)
Riverheart 2y ago
I’ve always been satisfied with Leafpad as a Notepad equivalent. No fluff, just a rectangle for dumping text.
akimbostrawman 2y ago
GNOME text editor is just that.

revskill 2y ago

So when will mspaint ? Copy a text then paste as an image

jimt1234 2y ago

Et tu, Notepad? Seriously, no one writes with Notepad. It's just for quick copy-paste text manipulation. That's it. No need for gen-AI. I used Notepad to make simple HTML pages back in 1995 - maybe, two dozen lines of "<h1>" and "<blink>". That's the most text I've ever written in Notepad.

terminalbraid 2y ago
I assure you there are still many devs that use notepad regularly to write horrible code.
- floren 2y ago
  I was assigned a partner in my robotics class that used Wordpad to write Java code.
- autoexec 2y ago
  Smart devs write their horrible code in Notepad++
- hnrodey 2y ago
  As much as I'd like to believe this isn't true...
metalliqaz 2y ago
"need" has nothing to do with it
RajT88 2y ago
I write with Notepad. No distractions, no temptation to add anything but text. I write musings, short stories, song lyrics, etc. and keep an archive of all these text files to reflect on later. Sometimes I write notes and letters to my future self. All notepad.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

mbg721 2y ago

I use Notepad to stop Excel from thinking it's smarter than me. "Yes, those leading zeroes are important." This is something of a step backward.

photochemsyn 2y ago

Where's my open-source vim plugin for this purpose? Anyone know?

markus_zhang 2y ago

I guess MSFT sees everyone eating lunch with ChatGPT and other AI apis and think: "I can do it too!".

arresin 2y ago

> It’s worth noting that you’ll have to sign in to your Microsoft account to use Rewrite, as it’s “powered by a cloud-based service that requires authentication and authorization.” They are truly data leeches trying to lap at any cut you might have for a bit of tasty data.

stewx 2y ago
I presume this is for applying rate-limiting, so their API doesn't get utterly abused
- rendaw 2y ago
  And for vacuuming up personal data, because why not both.
  - ruszki 2y ago
    It’s pretty obvious after their data grab with the new Outlook. They destroyed the built-in app which I used all the time just to try to get all of my emails.
    - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
      > It’s pretty obvious after their data grab with the new Outlook. What did they do this time?
      - kotaKat 2y ago
        The New Outlook(tm) is an Edge Webview to the cloud. In the stupidest twist of fate, you cannot open Outlook offline, at all. There is no concept of "offline" in the New Outlook. I assume this is Microsoft forcing away the issues of the past of 50+GB OST files by making Outlook a glorified webmail client instead. Oh, and Microsoft Teams? You can open that offline and it's got a full cached experience. Innovation at its finest!
      - password4321 2y ago

petabyt 2y ago

At the rate that windows is getting worse and Linux is getting better, I wonder when the tipping point will be.

verytrivial 2y ago

I'm not even complaining anymore. I'm just ceasing to use this Ai garbage and ceasing to deal with people who spruik it. And if you're wondering what "spruik" means, Google will give you an Ai summary which is subtly wrong and contradicted by the first actual search result it list directly below it.

pornel 2y ago

We haven't had such FOMO-induced self-destruction since Google+.

busymom0 2y ago
What destroyed Google+? Curious.
- pornel 2y ago
  When "social" was a hot new thing, Google suddenly wanted to be Facebook, and started making all of their products part of Google+, whether it made sense or not. Google+ required having a public profile with a real name. Gmail/calendar/docs users who were tricked into activating plus, but didn't comply, got banned or forced to make a real name profile. Merging of Hangouts, Orkut, Blogger, YouTube comments, and Play Store reviews into the same "social network" made no sense. It was a blatant move to inflate user numbers, at cost of annoying users of the other services, who didn't sign up for a me-too Facebook. That was the first time when Google became uncool.

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago

Well, at least now it will have a semi-valid reason to connect to the internet. It is still bonkers, but a different kind of more acceptable kind of bonkers.

ramassnel1 2y ago

I don't know but adding A.I to notepad makes me wanna use VIM more

rqtwteye 2y ago

This seems to be a common trend everywhere. Instead of improving core functionality they add the latest buzzword tech, no matter it make sense or not. I am user of GaiaGPS to plan outdoors trips. Same there: the app is good but has some problems. Instead of fixing the problems they added social functionality which nobody really wants.

brianjlogan 2y ago
This is your tried and true. C level read a magazine, mandatory implementation order, engineer ticks the checkbox and waits for hype to pass so they can remove it.
- reaperducer 2y ago
  C level read a magazine, mandatory implementation order A magazine would be an improvement. I worked in a place where the owners were very susceptible to airport billboard ads. Every time they came back from a trip, we would brace for change.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    A scary version of this is driven home to me when I go to Washington DC and see all of the very expensive billboards at commuter stations near the Pentagon advertising fighter jets and other military equipment. It scares me every time because they wouldn't be splashing out the big bucks for those billboards if they weren't effective, and I absolutely don't want the military (or any other entity engaging in major expenditures) to be making those decisions based on billboards.
    - zh3 2y ago
      AKA the Beltway Bandits [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_bandit
  - bombcar 2y ago
    > I worked in a place where the owners were very susceptible to airport billboard ads. This explains why airports are entirely covered in ads that seem to be aimed at C-level execs only (nobody else gives a shit).

trentnix 2y ago

“But our keylogger is a feature!”, they explained.

gigel82 2y ago

Why cloud? Rewriting some text is definitely something a local LLM can do; they have NPUs on the Copilot PCs so why not use that? So far the only feature I've seen them talking about for the NPUs on the Copilot PCs is image generation in Paint. Something feels off here.

BobbyTables2 2y ago
Why not cloud for everything? They really want YOUR DATA!

indulona 2y ago

people already forgot that microsoft said years ago that they will make windows into a service and there will be no new version, just constant updates. this is what it looks like. ZERO privacy. you'll own nothing and be happy.

stainablesteel 2y ago

this sounds like a terrible idea, simple products should remain simple

christosjesus 2y ago

We forget how to speak. AI creates a real Tower of Babel.

daemin 2y ago

It seems not enough people are using AI features and therefore it is being put everywhere so that people can't help but use AI features. Instead of realising that people don't want these features and actively disable or avoid them, they've come to the conclusion that they're not being used because they're prominent enough, so they are being put everywhere so they cannot be missed. Windows is no longer a Personal Computer Operating System that you can just use.

akira2501 2y ago
They spent all this money on training. Massive amounts of one time and recurring costs. They have no idea how to write it all down. They never planned that they might have to. And people wonder why some of us were so insistent on not allowing this garbage pile of technologies to be open labeled 'AI.'

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

TheCleric 2y ago

Stuff like this is why I refuse to use Windows anymore.

jgalt212 2y ago

I don't blame Satya, I blame the foaming at the mouth AI-frenzied investor class. If these folks thought a second about this tech and tried to use it in a number of domains, they would not be clamoring to AI all the things.

bigs 2y ago

So, with all the ads, AI, “telemetry” etc when does someone fork Win XP, bring it up to 2024 level security and we all move to that?

ngneer 2y ago

Well, they already lost me as a user when they transitioned to an MDI interface. My only use for notepad.exe these days is to demonstrate exploits.

SmartestUnknown 2y ago

To my eyes, the original text in the example is much more readable than the LLM suggested rephrasing.

ankurdhama 2y ago

If you listen to Satya Nadella various talks/interviews you will realize that he think AI is the next major platform and we know MS lost the last major platform i.e mobile. So in his vision he wants MS to be the major player in this next platform shift and the way they are doing it is by putting AI in every nook and corner of their OS and apps. The only issue is that AI (in its current form) is NOT a platform but more of a "user interface based on natural language".

widea 2y ago

Edlin?

evanjrowley 2y ago

Dear god please forgive humanity for these horrible abominations

samuelec 2y ago

Cool! now windoz users got both a corporate spyware and a new ads tool in any possible place

graypegg 2y ago

I do not know much about the internal workings of Windows, but why is this not implemented as a system wide action? Are they really implementing "AI Tools" in every application that uses text... individually? If this was in the context menu, along with Cut, Copy and Paste, you would be getting AI integration for free on every application that renders a text box widget. I mean... spell check is implemented like that right? They seem to be pitching this as a way to correct or improve text so why not build on that? I'm not even a fan of this sort of generative AI "type whatever" tool, or I at least find it to normally be inadequate. But if they're going to do this AI pivot in Windows anyway, the choice of implementation here seems short sighted.

stuckkeys 2y ago

Wth is the point of this? Are they trying to get data from every source they can? This can mean one thing: they want to get eid of openAI in years to come so they are collecting everything they can.