The quietest AI in Windows 11 hides in the two oldest apps on the PC. Paint can now generate images and Notepad can rewrite your text. This page grades honestly what can be switched off - and what simply sits there, unused, if you never touch it.
Nobody installed Paint expecting an image generator, yet current Windows 11 builds give it Image Creator, and on Copilot+ PCs Cocreator plus generative fill and erase. Notepad, the plainest app in Windows history, gained Rewrite - select text and an AI rephrases it. These features irritate a particular kind of user: the one who chose these apps precisely because they were simple. The honest news is mixed. There is no single off switch for app AI, but every one of these features has a gate in front of it - an account sign-in, a settings option, or the simple fact that it does nothing until invoked.
Three features, three different grades. Image Creator generates pictures from a text prompt and appears in Paint on regular Windows 11 PCs. Cocreator turns your rough sketch plus a prompt into finished art and runs on the NPU, so it is Copilot+ PC only. Generative fill and generative erase add or remove objects in a photo with AI, again Copilot+ territory. Everything else in Paint - brushes, shapes, layers, resize - is the same local tool it always was, working fully offline. The AI features are additions parked in the toolbar, not a rewrite of the app.
Notepad's AI feature is called Rewrite: select text, choose Rewrite, and you get rephrased, lengthened, shortened or re-toned versions, with custom rewrite options in newer builds. It also supports Markdown formatting now - a separate, non-AI change that old-timers sometimes blame on the AI update. Rewrite is a cloud-assisted feature, which is why the next card matters: without the account it needs, the button is decoration. Plain text editing in Notepad remains exactly what it was in 1985 in spirit - local, instant and private.
Paint's Image Creator and Notepad's Rewrite both require you to be signed in with a Microsoft account - they run on account-linked services with AI credits attached to the account. A PC used with a local account, or one where you simply never sign in inside these apps, cannot use them: the feature asks for sign-in and stops there. On shared and office PCs this is the practical control - no sign-in, no generation. Honest grading: this is a gate, not a removal, and a user who signs in for other reasons opens the gate for these apps too.
Notepad carries its preferences in its own Settings page (the gear icon), including an AI features option for Rewrite in current builds - turn it off there and the Rewrite entry points leave the app. Paint's generative features are managed through the app and your account rather than a master toggle; on Copilot+ PCs the features appear only because the hardware supports them. Because app updates rearrange these settings, treat the location as "inside the app's own settings, near the top level" and spend ten seconds looking rather than following a screenshot from last year. The direction of travel is clear, though: Microsoft keeps adding per-app toggles because users asked for them.
Paint and Notepad are Store apps now, so they uninstall like other apps (Settings > Apps > Installed apps) and reinstall from the Microsoft Store just as easily. That removes the AI and the app - a bad trade if you use Notepad fifty times a day, as most IT people do. Mention it for completeness, recommend it for almost nobody. The one audience it suits is a locked-down kiosk or exam machine where the app list itself is policy. For a normal PC, the app AI grade is honestly: ignorable, gated, and per-app toggleable - far down the priority list from Copilot and Recall.
Only what you hand them. Rewrite processes the text you select and submit; Notepad does not send your files anywhere for sitting open on the desktop. Image Creator generates from the prompt you type. Nothing in either app scans your documents in the background - they are request-response features, not listeners. The reasonable cautions are the ordinary ones: do not paste confidential text into any cloud AI tool, and remember that content created with these tools can carry AI content credentials marking it as AI-edited. The desktop apps themselves remain local tools with an AI doorbell - you decide whether to answer it.
Every step shown live on a real Windows 11 PC - which AI features go, which stay, and the honest limits of removing them.
▶️ Watch Full VideoThe old apps are not offered separately anymore - Paint and Notepad are Store apps that update in place. But the classic tools inside them are unchanged: brushes, shapes, plain text editing all work exactly as before, offline. What changed is extra buttons in the toolbar. Turn off the AI option in Notepad settings, stay signed out in Paint, and the experience is effectively the old one.
The headline ones do not. Image Creator and Rewrite are account-linked services - no sign-in and no connection means no generation, which is precisely why the sign-in gate is such an effective off switch on shared machines. Cocreator on Copilot+ PCs is the exception - it draws on the local NPU - and it simply does not exist on regular PCs.
Because Notepad is now a Store app that Microsoft updates like any other app, adding Markdown support, formatting and the Rewrite feature in the same stream. You cannot freeze the Store version easily, but every AI element so far is either toggleable in its settings or gated behind sign-in - the plain text editor at its core keeps working the same way.