Microsoft made bold claims last year that 2024 would be “the year of the AI PC,” and those proclamations already seem to be coming true. Microsoft appears to be prepping a new generative AI feature for its venerable Notepad text editing application built into Windows, based on code discoveries made by attentive Windows testers.

While not yet formally announced, references uncovered in the latest Windows 11 test builds point to a new “Cowriter” feature on the horizon that would leverage AI to assist Notepad users. It seems Cowriter may use a credits system similar to what Microsoft already employs in its Cocreator feature in Paint, limiting how often the AI-powered capabilities can be tapped before needing to pay. Microsoft has not yet detailed if or how it plans to charge once credits run dry. The existing Bing AI system uses daily caps before throttling features.

Additional evidence like waitlist references and prepared marketing assets seem to signal Microsoft could soon start beta testing Notepad’s Cowriter functionality more broadly, as it did for months with Paint before full public release.

Update Jan. 18, 2024, 11:50 am ET: There was a new update yesterday on X/Twitter by a user named @PhantomOfEarth. According to the update, the new build of the generative AI Cowriter feature in Notepad has been removed from Windows Insider Canary Preview. However, the user also mentioned that the feature will be added back once it is functional again. It’s worth noting that this generative AI Cowriter feature in Notepad is still under development and has not yet been publicly released.