It seems that Microsoft explored the idea of building Windows fully around AI in the past, based on a leaked video from a couple of years ago.

Windows Central highlighted a video (see below) that's a few minutes long and was leaked via the BetaWiki Discord server, with our sister site's Zac Bowden noting that sources have provided assurances that the clip is real. It shows an AI-focused version of Windows built around Copilot and apparently codenamed Aion.

The concept shown is a lightweight web-based OS, meaning it's built on web apps rather than native Windows apps. In other words, it won't run standard Windows (Win32) software, with the idea being to stream those apps to the desktop if they're required (meaning they're run from the cloud, or more specifically, Windows 365, Microsoft's cloud PC offering).

It's kind of like Microsoft's take on ChromeOS, then, leveraging the cloud, except that it's built around the Edge browser and Copilot.

Copilot runs the show, and is the central player in the Start menu, and the idea is that AI provides contextual suggestions here, recalling previous interactions to try and anticipate what the user might need.

In the video, Microsoft explains that Aion aims to break down the "traditional app-centric" approach to grouping on the taskbar, instead using 'Spaces' that act as groups into which apps, websites or files that pertain to the same goals are deposited.

The themed approach of Spaces sounds rather like the idea of Sets that Microsoft toyed with in Windows 10 the best part of a decade ago now, only to abandon the concept. Except this time around it's grouped content that's organized and curated by AI.

The Aion concept hasn't been well received by the computing public as you might guess. One commenter on the video simply states: "This company has completely lost the plot."

Another observes that it's "like ChromeOS for people who don't know how to use a computer at all."

And yet another notes: "How did they manage to even make simple web apps look slow and laggy? One of the strong points of ChromeOS is that it is very fast even on old, slow machines."

In fact, there are a few people who aren't impressed with how clunky and sluggish the operating system appears to be in the video. In fairness to Microsoft, though, it's just a concept illustration and early working code (although the evident lack of smoothness isn't a good look, it must be said). Bowden explains that the video was recorded at some point in 2024, and that it's "unclear if this was just a Hackathon project or something more."

The ideas explored within Aion could well be a hint of where Microsoft is headed with next-gen Windows, though. Which may be worrying for some, of course, but you might as well get used to these ideas.

While Microsoft has promised to trim back AI excesses in Windows 11, that's more about streamlining submenus here and there, and removing Copilot features from certain apps, than it is some kind of wholesale change of philosophy regarding AI. Windows 11 is getting AI agents, and indeed they are the next big thing for the OS, if Microsoft has anything to do with it (and, strangely enough, it does).

Indeed, with Project Solara, Microsoft plans to bring AI agents to all manner of devices in the world, beyond mere PCs and phones. Bowden theorizes that maybe Aion evolved into Solara.

Whatever the case, Aion is still a thing, believe it or not: Microsoft revealed a new family of local AI models running with the same name at Build 2026. These are 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 some form, then, even if it's a very different idea to the notion of a full-on Copilot-based operating system.

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Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).