CES 2024: AI PCs paving the way for enhanced productivity

With so much to do, and seemingly less and less time to fulfill all these tasks, productivity is a primary concern for many consumers. In tech, PC makers believe that AI integration is the answer.

Yahoo Finance’s Akiko Fujita reports from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, sitting down with executives from HP Inc. (HPQ), Lenovo (LNVGY, 0992.HK), Intel (INTC), and Dell (DELL) to discuss the integration of artificial intelligence into devices and how this innovation could efficiency forever.

At least 40-50% of the PCs in the next three years” will be AI-enabled, HP President of Personal Systems Alex Cho tells Fujita.

“It will bring tremendous productivity” states Luca Rossi, Lenovo EVP & President of the Intelligent Devices Group, noting the one-click accessibility of Microsoft's (MSFT) Copilot key on its keyboards.

Dell's Client Solutions Group President Sam Burd believes AI integration into PCs will promise more personalized user experiences, describing AI features as a "personal companion."

Click here to view more of Yahoo Finance's coverage of CES 2024 this week, or you can watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live here.

Editor's note: This article was written by Eyek Ntekim.

Video transcript

AKIKO FUJITA: Yahoo Finance's on the ground here in Las Vegas at CES 2024, where the PC is having a moment, specifically we're talking about AI PCs. We sat down with executives from Intel, Lenovo, HP, and Dell to talk about how the integration of AI technology into devices is likely to transform the PC experience.

So much of the conversation over the last year has been AI in the cloud. This is really that pivot point where we're talking about AI in devices. Why is that such a game changer?

MICHELLE HOLTHAUS: Well, it's a game changer because you can take these large language models that have been in cloud this kind of ambiguous set of experiences that no one tangibly could actually ever touch or hold, and now you've brought it with into the CPU, with this neural processing unit, where you allow it to run locally on the machine. And you allow that localization to be personalized to you.

So whatever is most important to you from an AI perspective, you now can do it on your machine. Whether you're connected to the internet or not, you have that power within the PC. And that's the real game changer, right?

ALEX CHO: One of the words we've used internally is to think about AI gives you superpowers. It allows you to summarize dramatic amounts of information much more quickly.

MICHELLE HOLTHAUS: So imagine if AI can be looking at your schedule, summarizing your emails, telling you what your most important things are for the day, as well as telling you, hey, you're not going to make this appointment. Should I make these changes? Those are all things that are kind of intangibles, but once they're part of your daily life, things that you're not willing to give up because they've made it easier.

LUCA ROSSI: It will do what you do in two hours in two minutes. So it will bring tremendous productivity. The more visible feature is this Copilot key. When you touch it, it will trigger all the AI functionality in the cloud.

ALEX CHO: What's amazing about AI is that now we're training the device. We're training models, so that it learns human. It will anticipate me. It will be far more personalized to me. And that's a step function change. It's more than just faster a little bit more, it is different because it's more personalized. And that's a revolution of what was always intended to be a personal computer. It's really going to become personalized.

SAM BURD: Yeah, I think we are in the beginning of the AI kind of air, and we're in like early innings for that. If you do go back a couple of years, I would say the PC-- we had the renaissance of the PC as you think about COVID. And people kind of woke up to, hey, this is a great device, a really important companion.

And you think about today now going, OK, taking that thing that kept me connected during those times to it's going to become this personal companion that will help me be more efficient in everything that I do.

ALEX CHO: Early estimates are that we would expect at least 40% to 50% of the PCs in the next three years will be AI PC-enabled. And with a richer set of configs that enable that, that can help double the growth rate of the PC industry.

LUCA ROSSI: We are confident that the AI PC will be an inflection point. And that will accelerate the replacement cycle.

SAM BURD: If you think about that potential for upgrades and people refreshing their PCs is pretty enormous to have the latest technology that lets them be more productive at work or get more done at home on their PC.

MICHELLE HOLTHAUS: So something very tangible, something you can't do on your machine today that you can do on your machine tomorrow. We're hoping that this spurs this inflection point of refresh and getting people to go and buy a new PC and have new experiences.

LUCA ROSSI: And if I can make an analogy, this might do what the smartphone has done to the phone. If you think about that, the smartphone gradually has completely erased the phone category, and everybody has upgraded to smartphone. AI PC is going to do the same for PC.