Windows is cool again at Microsoft, and it’s all thanks to AI. Even if you never plan on touching Copilot or another artificial intelligence tool, there's a reason Microsoft’s big AI plans ultimately benefit you and all PC users. The unintended consequences of the company's embrace of AI may even help save a billion Windows 10 PCs from their scheduled doom.

Windows Is Not Microsoft's Most Important Product

Windows is important to PC users, but Microsoft hasn’t always seen it as its top priority. Even in 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told Wired, “The operating system is no longer the most important layer for us.” He was talking about why Microsoft’s creation of the Android-based Surface Duo phone made sense, even though it wasn’t based on Windows. “What is most important for us is the app model and the experience,” he said.

Microsoft Surface Duo (Credit: PCMag)

Those comments come as no surprise when you acknowledge the company's two biggest businesses are the Office suite and cloud services. Delivering Office applications to your device, providing cloud services, and offering cloud computing services to businesses are all in the name of supporting those two pillars.

If that means Microsoft releases an Android phone, so be it. (Now that the Surface Duo line now appears to be dying, it's safe to say that bet didn’t pan out, like many others the company has made over the years.)

Today, with AI capturing the attention of not only the tech community, but also the public at large, Microsoft sees a new opportunity to get in on a hot trend early.

Microsoft Has Been Watching for Its Next Opportunity

When mobile was the hot new trend in tech, Microsoft lost out to Apple and Google, and the company has been trying to catch up ever since.

Like Meta, the company is looking for the next big thing—a new category of computing, some technological leap that’s as important as the mobile tech revolution. Microsoft has been waiting for a moment to pounce and take the lead in...something.

That explains why Microsoft hyped up the metaverse. It could also be a reason Microsoft is pushing cloud gaming. If cloud gaming really takes off, Microsoft will be in a better position to capitalize on it than Sony, Apple, and Google. (RIP Stadia.)

Why Microsoft Fell in Love With AI

Has Microsoft caught the next big thing with generative AI? The company is early to it, thanks to investments in OpenAI.

At a Microsoft event in New York City in September, Nadella declared generative AI, “essentially a new category of computing [that's] as significant as the PCs in the ’80s, the web in the ’90s, mobile in the 2000s, the cloud in the 2010s.” And the company made its moves.

It launched Bing Chat, beating Google to the punch on consumer AI. And then Microsoft unveiled Copilot, building AI into Windows 11. It pushed out generative AI to a huge number of people by putting it on the devices they already have.

Importantly, AI aligns with its other products, too. Microsoft is charging businesses $30 per user for access to generative AI in Office apps as part of Microsoft 365. Businesses may need a lot of cloud computing resources to run their own AI models, and Microsoft seems more than happy to provide that, too.

AI Is Good News for the Future of Windows

That September event was originally teased as a Surface event, but it became more of a Windows event, with Surface an afterthought. And more than Windows, it was an AI event with Windows merely the canvas on which to present the technology and its possibilities.

Microsoft's real strength in this scenario is that it has full control of a hugely popular platform: Windows. Sure, the company can offer Bing Chat through a web browser, and via the Bing app on your phone—and it does—but how many people are going to use it? The stronger move is to bolt a Copilot icon onto every Windows 11 taskbar and get those users accustomed to using AI before anyone else does. The potential market for AI is literally sitting in front of their operating systems waiting for it. And Microsoft can provide deeper integrations into Windows, things that wouldn’t be possible if you were just running the Bing app on an iPhone or accessing Bing Chat in a browser window on a Chromebook.

Recent additions to Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Shopping (Credit: Microsoft)

Without Windows, Microsoft would cede a lot of the AI ground to Google and Apple, who can and will integrate generative AI into their mobile operating systems.

That means Windows is suddenly cool again, at least inside Microsoft. The company put on a whole event showing off Windows and new features coming to the OS. So suddenly, Windows is important to Microsoft’s business goals in a way it hasn't been for decades.

I don’t know exactly what Microsoft has planned for the future of Windows, but at least the company seems excited about the next release, whether it’s called Windows 12 or not. A lot of that excitement may be around AI now, but Microsoft needs Windows to get AI into people's hands.

AI May Save Windows 10

We’re already seeing the first signs of a Windows renaissance. With the shock departure of Microsoft’s Panos Panay, who ran the company’s Windows business in addition to its Surface business, things appear to be changing under the new Windows leadership.

You may have heard about the impending chaos for Windows 10 PCs. In October 2025, Windows 10 is set to stop receiving security updates. But most PCs in the world, about a billion of them, still run Windows 10, so that’s one billion computers headed for the trash as far as Microsoft is concerned.

Windows 10 looked pretty doomed. But now, Zac Bowden at Windows Central quotes inside sources who tell him Microsoft is working on putting Copilot onto Windows 10 PCs, too.

It would make perfect business sense. If 400 million PCs run Windows 11 and one billion run Windows 10, getting Copilot on Windows 10 boosts Microsoft’s potential AI reach to an incredible 1.4 billion PCs.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to convince developers to write plug-ins for its Copilot AI, which could make it wildly more useful. Enticing these developers with a potential customer base of 1.4 billion only helps Microsoft further stake its claim over AI.

However, that plan isn't so strong if all those Windows 10 PCs are indeed headed for the trash in less than two years. Unsurprisingly, Bowden reports that Microsoft is discussing extending its support timetable to give those Windows 10 PCs a longer lifespan. The incentive to keep those machines in operation for longer is real.

Microsoft Cares About Its Captive Audience

In a world captivated by AI, the cost of supporting Windows 10 may be worth it. Microsoft gets to keep a billion PCs around, and the company can deliver its AI vision to people without Google and Apple getting in the way. AI looks like it’s giving Windows 10 PCs new life. The future of Windows as a whole looks much brighter, too.