Microsoft’s Paint app now boasts not just one, but two AI art tools — Image Creator and Cocreator — and boy, are they something.
First things first: Microsoft Cocreator, the scaled-down version of Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator/Microsoft Designer, is still the engine of AI art in Paint. Type in a prompt, and it will create a scene according to your description and style.
Except it’s not. Microsoft Cocreator was renamed to Image Creator, and Microsoft Cocreator is now an entirely different tool. Confusing, right? The king is dead; long live the king.
But the new Cocreator is just as cool. The only catch? It needs an NPU and a Copilot+ PC.
Hands on with Microsoft Cocreator for Paint
Image Creator and Cocreator are almost the same thing, and in some apps, they’d be two features of the same application. Image Creator paints a scene based upon your prompt alone. But the new Cocreator really takes advantage of the new Surface Pro, and its pen.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Cocreator creates AI art based upon a description and your sketch of the screen. Draw a few mountain peaks — absolutely terribly, as I did — add a few trees, and then ask Cocreator to draw the scene, and it will using your sketch as a guide. But it gets better: Cocreator can do this in real time.
In this case, Cocreator reminds me of Meta.ai, Meta’s recent AI art reveal. It, too, can perform AI art generation in real time, tweaking the image literally as you type it. Cocreator does the same thing, but just as you draw.
It’s a really interesting meeting of the minds. Cocreator didn’t do a great job with my early sketch, but when I filled in details — coloring the trees green, making the mountains purple — suddenly Cocreator understood what I wanted. It started filling in the details I couldn’t, and did a rather nice job. A few “V”‘s in the upper corner, and it created the silhouettes of birds flying.
OpenAI and Google are building more collaborative AI engines that work with you to figure out what you want. Microsoft may be doing the same with Copilot. In the meantime, though, the company’s making great strides with AI art, and Cocreator continues to play to Microsoft’s strengths. If you buy a Copilot+ PC, try it out.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.