Little by little, but inexorably, the Artificial Intelligence It is colonizing new aspects of our lives. Microsoft is one of the companies that is most firmly committed to this technological revolution and this is a good example of it: From now on you can use AI in Notepad.
Application Notepad Windows 11 is the one chosen to test a new feature called “Explain with Copilot”. In addition to this, new improvements have been made to the Snipping tool for taking screenshots. At the moment, these new features are only available to Windows 11 Insiders, although they will surely be available to all users in a short time. Let's see what they are:
What is the new Notepad with AI like?
After several months working on this issue, Microsoft has finally announced the integration of its artificial intelligence Copilot in the Notepad application. The news has been received with much expectation, especially because its main objective is to multiply the usefulness of the text editing application.
Therefore, after many years in oblivion without the slightest improvement being introduced, this basic tool (one could even say rudimentary) has received a series of improvements that all users appreciate and that is worth highlighting:
- Tabs, which allow us to work with more than a single document at the same time. It's amazing how many years it has taken Microsoft to enable something so simple and necessary.
- Keyboard shortcuts, which always make our lives easier and allow us to save time.
- Options for file management (automatic title generation, history of unsaved changes and others).
- The function «Explanation with Copilot», undoubtedly the most notable improvement of all, which we explain later.
It must be said that the changes introduced will not affect the appearance or the most basic functions of the application. At first glance, everything is going to be more or more the same. In reality, everything indicates that we are more of a kind of experiment, the results of which will be analyzed to develop Copilot in other facets of Windows in the near future. Within this plan, Notepad would be something like a testing bench.
The reason for this is purely commercial and understandable: Microsoft's ultimate goal is that, over time, users end up using the paid office suite, recently renamed Microsoft 365. That is, all the wonders that we can now enjoy in the We are going to see Notepad developed more deeply and extensively in Office applications. And you will have to pay to enjoy them, of course.
What can we ask of Notepad's AI?
So, now that artificial intelligence has come to Notepad, what are the things we can do with Copilot? In addition to the aspects mentioned in the previous section, the most interesting thing is the new function «Explanation with Copilot».
The way to use this practical resource is very simple. You just have to highlight a fragment of text and click with the right mouse button. Then a box will open (see image above) showing this option*. Once we select it, The new Copilot AI sidebar will appear on the screen with a summary or analysis of the highlighted text. The idea is that users can browse log files and code snippets that are difficult to edit in other applications, although it can also be very useful when writing web files in Notepad. Interesting, right?
(*) The “Explanation with Copilot” function can also be accessed via the Ctrl + E keyboard shortcut, in case the first method does not work, something that some Windows 11 beta users have apparently already experienced.
About Copilot
Although practically everyone already knows it, we will remember once again that Microsoft Copilot is the name of the artificial intelligence virtual assistant developed by Microsoft for Windows 11. It was presented in March 2023 for Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office), although that same year another open version would be launched for all users of the operating system.
Copilot uses a language model developed to perform translation, text generation and creative content features. It also integrates a tool to answer questions in an informative way. That is precisely what applies to the "Explanation with Copilot" function now integrated into the Notepad that we have shown in the previous paragraphs.
Surely you are interested in knowing more about Copilot and the implementation of artificial intelligence in Windows. IN that case we encourage you to read other posts dedicated to that topic, such as 10 things we can do with Copilot y Create songs with AI and Microsoft Copilot.