Borrowing Another App's Tools
For an AI-built control that borrows another application's tools, choosing the editing operation and choosing when to yield the computer are parts of the same design.
In a retouching demonstration, the Interface Quilt prototype puts a button over PowerPoint that brings Affinity’s image-editing canvas and controls to a slide. The person paints away text; the edited image returns to PowerPoint. The AI-assisted modification is described in a November 1 preprint.
For the retouching example, the authors report that transferring the image through interface clicks temporarily makes the operating system unusable to the person.
For someone asking AI to build around an existing application, those two facts belong in the same brief. Deciding when a favorite operation may occupy the computer is part of making it fit the work, even if its new button sits exactly where the person wants it.
What does staying in PowerPoint mean?
PowerPoint already provides an alternative. Microsoft’s instructions describe brushing over unwanted content, erasing it and updating the slide. Its rollout announcement cautions that availability varies. The question is why someone would want another route to the result.
If the whole request is to remove unwanted text from an image, that native option belongs in the comparison. If the request is to use a particular editor’s operation, however, substituting another route could miss the point. Someone might care about how they paint or adjust the edit, not just whether the resulting image is clean. That preference would need to come from the person commissioning the control, not from an assumption that fewer application windows must be better.
The layout deserves its own judgment, too. In a May 1 Microsoft Q&A post, DougKe reported that a new window for background removal made editing harder and asked to restore the earlier approach. That is 1 person’s account of another editing task, not evidence that Quilt would help them.
The account does not tell us which interface would suit that person. It does show why counting applications cannot stand in for judging the arrangement. An editing task has a result to produce, an operation to perform and an arrangement in which to perform it. A person can want a change to one without wanting the others replaced.
Decide which route should repeat
The distinction matters because asking for a control is different from asking for a finished image. An acceptable image can end a one-off task. A control selects a route for future occasions, when the person may have different things competing for the computer. The intended occasion therefore belongs alongside the intended editing operation in the request.
The paper presents demonstrations, not a comparative user-outcome evaluation.
Repeated use could make either route more attractive. That remains an open outcome, not something the existence of a new control decides. Equally, a pause in other work need not make the borrowed operation a bad choice. The person may be willing to give it the computer at the right moment.
Put the pause in the brief
Consider a hypothetical slide review conducted during a conversation. A person might want to mark an image for retouching now but begin the transfer afterward, when the computer is no longer needed for the discussion. In a dedicated editing session, the same person might prefer the operation to begin immediately. The difference is the occasion, not necessarily the editing tool.
A deliberate handover before an operation occupies the machine would be one possible design response. It is a proposal, not a capability demonstrated here. An extra decision would also cost attention; asking on every use could be the wrong arrangement for someone who already intends to spend the session editing.
The retouch button makes the commissioning question concrete: bring the wanted operation to this image, and decide when it may take the computer. The useful design would preserve both intentions, rather than let the location of the new control silently answer for them.
Sources
- Leping Qiu and colleagues, Interface Quilt: Modifying Applications with Computer Use Agents and Generative UI, November 1, 2026 preprint, version 1.
- Microsoft Support, Edit pictures.
- Rachelle Dong, Powerful image editing, now in PowerPoint, March 6, 2026, updated April 17.
- DougKe, How to revert back to the original image editor in Microsoft Powerpoint, Microsoft Q&A, May 1, 2026.