AI operating systems are inevitable. That much has been clear to me since ChatGPT went viral in late 2022. That was the moment when an AI tool arrived that we could talk to using conversational language via text. The future was easy to predict from there.
You’d talk to the AI via voice and give it more complex tasks to solve. The AI would control apps for you and connect to personal data sources. After that, the AI would act as a personal assistant on devices where you won’t always have to look at the screen.
Put differently, we’d reach an age of AI products like the ones we see in movies. Star Trek is the best example. But the movie Her is probably the personal AI OS experience where we’re going to get soon enough… hopefully without falling in love with an AI.
Some of the things I mentioned above have already happened. We can use voice to talk to AI chatbots, and companies like OpenAI and Google have AI agents that can perform tasks on your behalf. You can use AI to control Windows, and Apple’s vision for Apple Intelligence involves having Siri manage some app actions for the user.
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These are the building blocks for what comes next. OpenAI is working on hardware that will probably run an early version of AI OS. Google has been transforming Android into an AI-first operating system. Apple will no doubt do the same with iOS and macOS.
But it turns out that the world’s first AI OS isn’t coming from the companies you expected. It’s also not quite the personal AI experience that movies like Her imagined. Instead, it’s called Warmwind, and it comes from German startup Jena.
Warmwind is out in beta, but you can’t really use it right now. There’s a growing waiting list with more than 12,000 people on it.
AI will soon let us manage computers and workflows with natural language. We’ll tell the AI what we need, and it’ll do it for us.
Warmwind isn’t exactly that. It’s not the personal assistant that will know everything about you and assist you throughout the day. It’s not similar to the AI OS in Her, either. But it’s a tool that might transform how you go about handling repetitive computing tasks, especially at work.
What is Warmwind?
Two years into development, Warmwind is designed to be private. The data the AI handles is hosted on German servers, which means they’re protected by the strong GDPR privacy laws in the EU. Warmwind is designed to work in the cloud, not your PC. Instead, it’ll handle tasks in a secure virtual environment that you don’t have to oversee.
The AI will control each instance of the operating system like a human would. It’ll click on UI elements and type text. Warmwind is intended for enterprise customers who want to automate tasks and save time.
What’s brilliant about Warmwind, assuming it works as advertised, is that you can train the AI OS to perform the actions you want it to. Warmwind will observe how you control the virtual computer to perform a task, and then it’ll repeat it.
Jena admits in a blog post that Warmwind OS isn’t quite the computer operating system one would expect, especially in the AI era. Instead, it might look like an AI web app working with browsers and other preinstalled software.
Better said, Warmwind behaves like a human working with a computer, only Warmwind can repeat the same tasks over and over without getting worn out. Here’s how Jena describes it:
Warmwind OS is a cloud-native, AI-driven platform that automates digital workflows – CI/CD pipelines, reporting tasks, issue handling, and more – by behaving like a “digital employee.” It clicks, types, reads, navigates, and executes across software interfaces, without requiring API integrations. All of this happens remotely.
The actual system is a custom Linux distribution (a real OS) that’s optimized for automation workloads. Warmwind uses Wayland and VNC streaming to send the UI to the browser, where you view it. There’s no “web app” per se. If you close the window, the app doesn’t stop. The AI works in the background until you decide to terminate it.
The company also says that calling its AI product Warmwind OS is “intentional.” It’s a metaphor. “When we say, ‘It’s an operating system for AI workers,’ people immediately get a feel for it.”
How much does it cost?
In addition to using a mouse and keyboard to work, Warmwind can interact with a myriad of apps, from web browsers to productivity apps like Microsoft’s Office suite.
Warmwind can monitor social networking, browse the web for data, respond to emails, perform other customer support tasks, compile data into reports, and basically anything else you can automate with AI.
That might be an invaluable resource in a world where we’re trying to be more productive and automate repetitive, boring tasks. Warmwind OS practically lets you set up a digital worker for each separate activity you might need to automate.
That’s why Warmwind is perfect for businesses rather than individuals.
However, it might be a while before you can gain access if you’re not already a beta tester. On that note, it’s unclear how much Warmwind will cost or what premium subscriptions might have to offer. But it’s certainly an AI development you should be keeping tabs on.
You can join the waitlist here. While you wait, check out the Warmwind demos above and below.
