AI tools have arrived in two of the most basic and long-serving Windows utilities. Here’s what they do and how you can turn them off if you prefer.

Microsoft is now adding AI to Notepad, the simple text editor that’s been around since Windows 1.0. This is part of Microsoft’s big idea to add Copilot AI to more apps in Windows.

Microsoft is distributing new preview versions of the rudimentary text editor Notepad in the Insider channels. It now learns advanced text formatting and also allows Markdown-style input.

Notepad now lets you use markdown text formatting on Windows 11, which means you can write in Notepad just like you could in WordPad.