For the first time ever, you’ll need a paid subscription to access some features in Microsoft apps Notepad and Paint. Newer artificial intelligence capabilities have been added to these apps, such as an image generator in Paint and AI rewriting of text in Notepad, and — as reported by PC World earlier this year — they’ll require a paid Microsoft 365 account.
Microsoft posted some details about the new AI features on one of its blogs back in November.
It seems as if paywalling the AI features would not affect the ability for Windows users who don’t have a 365 subscription to access and use the apps for everything else. Features that are not accessible due to a lack of a subscription may be grayed out in the apps. A representative for Microsoft said the company had no…