They've added a lot of features and it's almost like Photoshop Elements now. It has layers, general photo editing tools, an AI generator, etc.
Honestly I like layers in Paint. Even pixel art programs have layers.
Just like any text editor is doomed to become either Emacs or Word, so any image editor is doomed to become Photoshop.
I hope MS is not getting exclusive right for manufacturing spoons because I want mine to scoop up stuff like soup or ice-cream without smart features activated by elegant touch UI on the handle like cutting down trees being in the way to the grocery store to 'elevate user experience', or others. This stuffing more and more into everything and anything for the sake of shock and awe is a stupid (and dangerous) thing.
I remember that when Paint started being funky I found a Windows XP exe and used that. I want Paint to be the graphical equivalent of hexedit.
Now that I'm on Linux, I use jspaint.app.