Microsoft Paint's new AI image generator builds on your brushstrokes

[vunderba]

It's a little bit more work to set up, but I'd recommend Krita with diffusion if you want to get into this. Runs locally, swap exact checkpoints you want to use, supports poseable controlnets, and it doesn't phone home to mommy Microsoft.

https://github.com/Acly/krita-ai-diffusion

Video demonstration

https://youtu.be/AF2VyqSApjA

[3abiton]

I got myself recently one of those cheap graphic tablets (Huion), for some drawing and note taking, and discovered Krita. Absolutely amazing open-source software. And integration with SD is just amazing.

[aimor]

I've had a pretty awesome experience with this, even with an old 8 GB AMD card. It's not perfect, but being able to run models locally within the paint app while mixing different control layers feels like the future.

[skybrian]

Maybe someone could explain what I'm doing wrong?

Using the online service, I couldn't figure out how to get it to generate an image from a doodle using img2img. Generating an image from a text prompt works, but that's nothing new. Running locally, it was way too slow on my M2 Mac Air.

[hot_gril]

I was about to ask how you do the equivalent in Krita, but I saw the GitHub showed that under "Using ControlNet to guide image generation with a crude scribble". Cool, gonna try this on my Mac mini.

[wruza]

It was still too cumbersome to set up and use last time I checked. And most of these integrations are just model+prompt without any common features that sdwebui (or comfyui) has. It looks cool as a proof of concept, but isn’t good, cause it’s a poor model+controlnet+segmentation ui. All they have to do is to add a few fields and checkboxes, but don’t expect it soon. I don’t even think that an image editor is a correct starting point for this coop. Imo, it’s webui.

[HyprMusic]

Thanks for sharing, I've been struggling to learn Draw Things and this feels much more intuitive.

[noman-land]

Holy crap it is crazy that this is possible at all, let alone offline and local, let alone free and open source. Just, wow.

[tithe]

Putting AI in MS Paint feels like putting a flux capacitor in a Geo Metro.

[dagmx]

I think it’s the best place to put it though.

The demographic are people (usually children) who aren’t discerning about the output but would love to have something high quality to look at.

Paint has always been about how some low quality squiggles may represent some latent art ability. It’s not true, but that’s the feeling it gave children and this continues that.

Of course there’s the whole other argument of whether it’s good or not….

[jpalomaki]

I think there's some history to it. Didn't they release Paint 3D around the time when Hololens and mixed reality was about to be the next big thing?

[qingcharles]

I think someone at MS hit their head on the toilet...

[dale_glass]

Wasn't that the point of using the DeLorean? That back in those times it was just a weird failed car?

[dmix]

This is very close minded. Won't someone think of the MS Paints PM's corporate career prospects if they didn't do this?

[mft_]

I like the idea that in MS (as probably in so many companies right now) there's a diktat (official or not) to start using AI everywhere.

And somewhere on the Paint team someone smiled, and thought "hold my beer"...

(Just wait until we get Co-pilot baked into Notepad!)

[binarymax]

It’s not April 1st. What’s going on here?

Should notepad complete your sentences too?

Maybe file explorer should just make new files for you!

[greybox]

Does nobody take joy in creating something themselves anymore? Everything has become about the end result, and it's a shame. I'm not sure what we're loosing, but it's something

[GaggiX]

I red that the AI runs locally, but then the image is uploaded to Microsoft servers to check that it doesn't violate any policies.

[surfingdino]

Are those images checked by their Kenyan team?

https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/

[phito]

Wow that's so... lame...

[ToucanLoucan]

So Microsoft's policies dictate what my machine can generate? Cool, cool cool.

[fragmede]

[citation needed]

before I get my pitchfork out (I got a new one, it's real shiny), can someone dig up a reference that says they're actually doing this?

[throwawayy999]

No, this isn't correct. The content moderation is another model that runs locally on the NPU, similar to the group of models used for image generation. There is no image uploaded to Microsoft. Note that there is no support for non-NPU devices.

[politelemon]

How are they able to sustain keeping this free? Or is the idea that it's a demo for now and they try to charge for this later?

[ADeerAppeared]

It's not sustainable.

Copilot+ runs locally, but has the quality of 2 years ago, it's basically useless for anything but shitposts and spam.

The cloud AI tools all burn hideous amounts of money, all ran at a loss.

AGI is a red herring, and will not happen. The architecture of generative-AI systems simply doesn't permit the required logic and reasoning capability.

Even the "Actually, Indians" concept of outsourcing the tertiary sector to the developing world by way of having low-skill workers clean up AI generated trash is unviable. (It both doesn't work, and is politically doomed.)

What's going on here is that tech companies are tearing up everything to pump their stock prices after the covid-tech-boom and ZIRP ended. Burn down their core products to keep the bubble going just a bit longer.

[Mo3]

Brother all of this upcoming AI integration in Windows opens a whole new era of siphoning off valuable user data, that little stable diffusion on MS Paint there could be written off as a small PR and marketing position. In any case it runs locally.

[simonw]

It runs locally, so there's no need for them to spend money on a server-side inference layer.

[rchaud]

Windows 11 has ads in the Start Menu now.

[klyrs]

The AI won't let you draw a penguin smashing the windows logo anymore, so this is partly funded by the anticompetition department.

(the above is technically parody and not precisely serious)

[galaxyLogic]

When users are not using AI in the Cloud but AI on their PC they are benefitting about as much as such a service online would cost. MS is then able to somehow take part of that saved money, perhaps by selling users more high-end apps which can run local-only on users' PC, and thus save users money they would otherwise spend on data-center services. Parts of that saved money must trickle to MS, because its software is what is producing that value.

[croes]

They try to kill the competition, make people dependent on AI and then they can put a price tag on it.

[TowerTall]

Eventually it will tied to o365 subscription (or windows license subscription) is my guess. For now they just swallow the cost to get access to all data and use that data to improve Azure and GPT. Bing didn't make a profit for many years for example

[CatWChainsaw]

Microsoft is the company that is most obviously pursuing computers as a service. (perpetual OS rental, at least.)

[freeone3000]

It runs locally! You’re the one paying for the compute by virtue of having the computer it runs on.

[Aaronontheweb]

We'll see how "sell AI itself as a feature" rather than building actually useful features with AI works.

[ArcaneMoose]

Love this direction for Paint. Simplistic but capable and fun for kids (the original's main strength)

[al_borland]

I worry tools like this will make kids not bother with developing their own drawing skills.

[mordae]

Recently I've been walking a considerably younger colleague through linear interpolation and since they use Copilot, we were constantly being interrupted by it's suggestions. It was definitely not conductive to the learning process.

I imagine having something similar in paint will prove pretty distracting as well.

[beretguy]

Clippy 2.0.

[Jupe]

No idea if this any good... Every 3 seconds of video spawns a 10 second video advertisement. I gave up.

[INTPenis]

Me being perpetually unartistic I would actually love it if I could just make some sketches and AI could beautify them for me, or fill in the blanks and render what I want.

This would be like what frameworks were for artists who wanted to make full stack webapps.

[kurts_mustache]

First time in a long time I kind of wish I had a Windows machine to try this out.

[larodi]

Just showed as I read this to a painter/ex-architect girl which replied ‘damn this AI I’m going to be out of job very soon’.

[fastball]

If you haven't seen what they've been doing over at tldraw[1] with AI, you definitely should. A different direction from MS Paint, but very cool.

[1] https://x.com/tldraw

[ImAnAmateur]

Neat to see this particular tech again. I think it's cool for art's sake. Something someone can use as they paint, so the final result is all their own brush strokes.

[auggierose]

Is that something that you could do with an Open AI API call?

[agilob]

What if copilot is down? I wont be able to use MS Paint?

[roydivision]

Eh? The whole point of Paint was that it never changed. It's even been copied for it's simplicity, a clone of which is the only painting app I have on my Mac exactly because all it does is the basics. Adding AI to it is a joke.