Back in 2022 if you recall, we had reported on "EdgeOS", a web-powered operating system built on Edge. Turns out though it was not real and was a hoax; however at the time we had remarked on how Microsoft would probably think it's a great idea since the browser was getting more and more bloated fairly rapidly.
Interestingly two years down the line in 2024, it seems Microsoft was indeed working on such a thing, an actual lightweight Windows OS "built on Edge" and "driven by AI agents". Dubbed "Project Aion", it would have been solely based around Copilot and Edge. Images and videos of this surfaced today on BetaWiki discord. No wonder there was a lot of buzz about alleged AI-powered and cloud-based Windows 12 during this time, and some of it was fueled by Microsoft itself with big execs like Panos Panay hyping it up.
The narrator in the leaked video says "Aion is an example of a web-based agent OS that natively builds Copilot into the core of the shell." Speaking of which, while the general shell user interface (UI) of Aion looks quite similar to Windows 11, there are some major differences. The most noticeable one perhaps is that the Start button is replaced by the Copilot key.
Come to think of it, this all makes sense now as to why Microsoft was pushing on the AI and Copilot gears so hard back in 2023, as at the time CEO Satya Nadella had even compared the newly introduced Copilot key to the second coming of the revolutionary Start button.
Under the hood, Windows Aion is shown to be running on Win3 which, according to Windows Central, was a minimalist Windows codebase with no Win32 legacy app support. The images and video seem to suggest it would work on AOSP as well as Windows, which sounds quite similar to the company's recently announced Project Solara, so perhaps Aion has simply evolved into Solara so as to help turn Microsoft's agentic Windows dreams into a reality.
Bear in mind though that it's not confirmed that Microsoft was ever indeed working on such a thing and as such, this could certainly be a very well-made hoax too, similar to the earlier EdgeOS thing.
You can watch the leaked video below (***Volume Warning):
Let us know in the comments down below what you think of this Edge and Copilot-powered Windows OS prototype that never saw the light of day.
Source: BetaWiki (Discord) via Windows Central