Paint gets DALL-E 3 superpowers

Microsoft once tried to kill MS Paint back in 2017 to push Paint 3D, but public backlash forced them to keep the classic tool alive. Six years later, that very same lightweight app just got OpenAI's most powerful image model built right into it.

Microsoft is rolling out its DALL-E 3 integration, dubbed "Cocreator," to all Windows 11 users outside the Insider preview program. The rollout follows announcements made during Microsoft's September 26 event, where the company promised to embed AI throughout Windows and inbox apps.

The classic canvas meets DALL-E 3

Cocreator has been testing in the Canary, Dev, and Release Preview channels since September. Starting this week, anyone on regular Windows 11 can access it directly inside Paint.

To use it, you just launch Paint and look for the new Cocreator button on the right side of the toolbar. Clicking it opens a sidebar where you type in a text prompt describing what you want to see. The underlying DALL-E 3 engine generates several style variants, which you can drop onto the canvas with a single click.

Tests show the output quality matches what you get inside ChatGPT Plus or Bing Image Creator. If you are entirely new to prompt crafting, Paint even includes a built-in four-step tutorial to walk you through the basics.

One small catch: some users might still encounter a waitlist sign-up inside the sidebar, which can take a few days to get approved. The update is available through the Microsoft Store.

Becoming a surprisingly capable mini-Photoshop

Cocreator is actually the third major AI-adjacent feature Paint has picked up recently. In prior updates, Microsoft added full layer support alongside a one-click background removal tool powered by AI segmentation.

Put them all together, and the workflow suddenly feels remarkably modern. You can generate a background scene with DALL-E 3, spin up a new layer, generate another subject, strip its background in one click, and composite everything without ever leaving the default Windows app.

Why it matters

We think Microsoft's decision to modernize Paint rather than invent a separate AI app is brilliant distribution.

For everyday users, firing up Photoshop is too heavy, and heading to Midjourney or Discord feels intimidating. Paint sits natively on hundreds of millions of desktops, launches instantly, and now lets you generate and edit images without spending twenty dollars a month on subscriptions. If you just need quick social graphics, presentation slides, or fun sketches, it is genuinely worth opening Paint again.

For the broader industry, this shows how native OS bundling can instantly commoditize casual creative software. Startups selling basic AI image generation or simple background-removal tools will find it much harder to justify their existence when Windows does it out of the box for free.

That said, cloud compute costs remain the elephant in the room. The lingering waitlist suggests Microsoft is carefully throttling server demand, and it remains to be seen whether this free ride will eventually hit usage limits or credits down the road.