Microsoft’s Copilot AI Now Understands Your Terrible Handwriting

Microsoft is preparing to enable Copilot in OneNote to read and analyze handwritten notes, the feature has entered beta testing at the end of last monthand will enable OneNote users to take handwritten notes with a stylus, then summarize them, ask questions, and even generate to-do lists based on their notes.

The AI-powered Copilot feature in OneNote will even be able to convert handwritten notes to text for easier editing and sharing. Microsoft first launched Copilot in OneNote in November, and this update will be available to current Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscribers and Copilot Pro users when it rolls out more broadly.

I briefly tested Copilot’s ability to read my handwriting, and I’m impressed that it was able to decipher it. Summarization works well for petite handwritten notes and even larger ones. I asked Copilot to transcribe an entire paragraph of handwritten notes, which it managed to format into easy-to-read text that was faithful to the original but also a bit more cheerful. That’s impressive, considering that generative AI models tend to make things up half the time.

If you employ OneNote for handwritten to-do lists, this feature makes it much easier to convert those lists to text later. I created a handwritten list and Copilot was able to accurately convert it to text in a matter of seconds.

I’m not sure how Copilot will handle even worse handwriting. Samsung’s Galaxy AI has a similar feature that can automatically format handwritten letters, but it struggles some of the worst handwriting Like I’ve ever seen (sorry, Allison!).

To test Copilot’s handwritten note recognition feature, you must be a Microsoft 365 Insider, running the latest build of OneNote on Windows (17628.20006 or later), and have a Copilot Pro or Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription.