Microsoft unveiled an AI-powered feature called Advanced Paste in Windows with PowerToys at its Build 2024 conference on Tuesday (May 22). Opens new options for pasting content from the clipboard in several formats including plain text, markdown and JSON. Furthermore, those with OpenAI’s API credits gain access to more features such as text compression, code generation, and more. It’s just one of the AI-powered improvements the Mountain View-based tech giant unveiled at its developer conference.
According to the Microsoft Learn blog, the Advanced Paste feature is available in PowerToys version 0.81.0 and can be accessed with the Windows key + Shift + V shortcut. This opens the Advanced Paste window where users can choose from 3 options for pasting from the clipboard – plain text, JSON and markdown, all of which can be used with a hotkey.
1. Paste as plain text – Copies and pastes text from the clipboard without formatting.
2. Paste as JSON – Using this option updates the text copied from the clipboard to JSON format.
3. Paste as markdown – Changes the text copied from the clipboard and replaces it with the markdown version of the text.
Copied text can be pasted as JSON using the new advanced paste option
Photo credit: Microsoft Learn
Furthermore, Microsoft has introduced ‘Paste with AI’ which leverages OpenAI’s AI technology to offer even more advanced pasting functions. Users can provide a query, after which the text is analyzed and modified to fit the given context. To access it, users need to link their OpenAI accounts with PowerToys to enable the API key and have enough credits in their accounts. The list of functions includes text compression, text translation, code generation, text transformation, and text styling.
Access to advanced pasting option can be customized through settings. Users can turn on the ‘Paste with AI’ option, enable custom format preview, turn on clipboard history, and set customizable keyboard shortcuts for pasting. Microsoft says the quality of the text generated by ‘Paste with AI’ depends on the ‘quality of the input provided’. It recommends that users provide more context for the AI model to better understand the query and respond to requests.
