Earlier this month at AMD’s CES 2023 keynote, Microsoft’s EVP & Chief Product Officer (CEO), Panos Panay revealed that AI (artificial intelligence) is the future of Windows.

Back then, Panoy told, “Artificial Intelligence is going to reinvent how you do everything on Windows, quite literally,” during a discussion with the host and AMD CEO, Dr. Lisa Su at the CES 2023. He spoke about the integration of AI in the Windows experience.

The duo spoke mainly about the new AI engine in AMD’s Ryzen 7040 series chips, the first x86 processor to contain a dedicated AI engine that would enable Microsoft to build the next generation of AI-powered software.

With AI software of AMD’s Ryzen 7040 series working together with Windows 11 could be the beginning of a new thing, Panoy said.

He was quoted as saying:

AI is the defining technology of our time, it’s like nothing I have ever seen before. It’s transforming industries, it’s improving our daily lives on many ways – some of it you see, some of it you don’t see -, and we are right now right this moment at an inflexion point. This is where computing from the cloud to the edge is becoming more and more intelligent, more personal, and it’s all done by harnessing the power of AI.

[..]

.. now AMD is also at the forefront of AI technology, with Ryzen 7040 series, alongside Windows 11. It is our next step in this journey together.

While some features of Windows 11 already use AI, the future version of Windows, maybe Windows 12 or a later of the operating system, could be deeply integrated with the cloud as processing AI is very exhaustive. Panay also explains that the next Windows will “blur the line between cloud and edge.”

“Like these large generative models, think language models, code gen models, image models; these models are so powerful, so delightful, so useful, personal. But they are also very computing-intensive, and so we haven’t been able to do this before. We have never seen these intense workloads at this scale before, and they’re right here. It’s gonna need an operating system that blurs the line between cloud and edge, and that’s what we are doing right now,” Panay added.

Microsoft is already planning to roll out Windows 12 in either 2024 or 2025, with the company already working on the operating system behind closed doors, say sources close to the matter.

With Windows 10 scheduled to retire in 2025 and Windows 12 expected to debut in 2025, we could see Microsoft supporting two operating systems, Windows 11 and perhaps the next-gen AI-powered Windows 12, the same way it does today.