It appears Microsoft has explored the idea of building Windows entirely around AI in the past, based on a leaked video a few years ago.
Windows Central has highlighted a video (see below) that lasts a few minutes and was leaked via the BetaWiki Discord server, with our sister site’s Zac Bowden noting that sources have provided assurance that the clip is real. It shows an AI-focused version of Windows built around Copilot and apparently named Aion.
The concept presented is a lightweight web operating system, meaning it is built on web applications rather than native Windows applications. In other words, it won’t run standard Windows (Win32) software, the idea being to stream those apps to the desktop if they’re needed (meaning they’re run from the cloud, or more specifically Windows 365, Microsoft’s cloud PC offering).
It’s a bit like Microsoft’s cloud-powered version of ChromeOS, except it’s built around the Edge browser and Copilot.
Copilot runs the show and is the central player in the Start menu. The idea is that the AI provides contextual suggestions here, recalling previous interactions to try to anticipate what the user might need.
In the video, Microsoft explains that Aion aims to break the “traditional app-centric” approach to grouping in the taskbar, instead using “spaces” that act as groups into which apps, websites, or files relating to the same purposes are dropped.
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Analysis: AI enabled or disabled? This seems to lean more towards the latter
The Spaces thematic approach is more similar to the Sets idea that Microsoft toyed with in Windows 10 a good decade ago now, only to abandon the concept. Except this time, it’s AI-curated and curated bulk content.
The Aion concept was not well received by the computing public, as you might guess. One commenter on the video simply states: “This company has completely lost the ground. »
Another observes that it’s “like ChromeOS for people who don’t know how to use a computer at all.”
And yet another note: “How did they manage to make even simple web apps slow and slow? One of the best things about ChromeOS is that it’s very fast, even on old and slow machines.”
In fact, some people aren’t impressed by how sluggish and sluggish the operating system is in the video. In fairness to Microsoft, however, this is just a concept illustration and some early working code (although the obvious lack of fluidity is not a good sight, it must be said). Bowden explains that the video was recorded sometime in 2024 and that it is “unclear if this was simply a Hackathon project or something more.”
The ideas being explored within Aion, however, could well provide some insight into where Microsoft is heading with next-generation Windows. Which may worry some people, of course, but you might as well get used to these ideas.
Although Microsoft has promised to reduce AI excess in Windows 11, this is more about streamlining submenus here and there and removing Copilot features from certain apps, than any kind of radical change in philosophy regarding AI. Windows 11 is getting AI agents, and they are indeed the next big thing for the operating system, if Microsoft has anything to do with it (and, strangely enough, it does).
Indeed, with the Solara project, Microsoft plans to introduce AI agents on all kinds of devices around the world, beyond just PCs and phones. Bowden theorizes that perhaps Aion evolved into Solara.
Regardless, Aion still exists, believe it or not: Microsoft unveiled a new family of local AI models running under the same name at Build 2026. They’re a “new generation of small language models that are smaller, faster, and more efficient than our previous Windows OS SLMs,” as Microsoft explains here. Apparently Aion lives on in one form or another, although it’s a very different idea from the notion of an operating system based entirely on Copilot.
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