Microsoft opens source Comic Chat, including AI-assisted modernisation code
The software, originally developed at Microsoft Research in the mid-1990s, is now available alongside experimental code designed to compile on current systems.
Microsoft has released the source code for Microsoft Comic Chat, an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) client originally bundled with Windows 98 in 1996. The software, which automatically converted text conversations into comic panels, is now available on GitHub via the Microsoft Open Source Blog, dated 16 July 2026.
The release includes the original 1990s-era C++ and MFC code alongside AI-assisted modernisation attempts. These modernisation efforts are described as not being polished re-releases, but rather experimental examples for the community to build upon.
Microsoft Comic Chat was developed by David “DJ” Kurlander, Tim Skelly, and David Salesin at Microsoft Research, with visual design by comic artist Jim Woodring. The software was released in 1996 with Internet Explorer 3 and later bundled with Windows 98.
It played a pivotal role in popularising the Comic Sans typeface, designed by Vincent Connare in 1994, by using it for speech bubbles. The application automatically interpreted conversational cues to generate comic panels, including character poses, facial expressions, and gestures.
The technology was presented at SIGGRAPH ’96 as an experiment in automatic illustration construction and layout. The software was localised into 24 languages and represented an early experiment in visual online communication during the mid-1990s.
The specific technical details of the AI-assisted modernisation attempts are not fully detailed in the source, beyond being described as "worked examples" rather than official updates. The extent of community adoption or success of the provided modernisation code is currently unknown as the release is recent (July 2026).
