Currently, the sales pitch for AI PCs revolves around what Microsoft's Copilot chatbot can achieve on hardware specifically designed to handle AI workloads and powered by Windows 11. However, Lenovo is already contemplating how to provide a differentiated experience to its consumers on top of Copilot. "A lot more things will come out that make us different compared to our competitors. While they are still using the standard Copilot, we will have something very different on top of that," Leon Yu, Consumer Business Lead at Lenovo Asia Pacific, told indianexpress.com on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the Lenovo Innovate event in Bangkok. That means Lenovo’s own work in AI, alongside some of the latest advances coming out of Microsoft, may give the PC maker a headstart to gain the upper hand in making the technology more ubiquitous. Right now, virtually all Windows PCs, rely on Microsoft’s Copilot, an AI Chatbot that utilises OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology to craft a response. Yu declined to reveal more about those "differentiated" experiences, but he did mention that the strategy to differentiate itself from other PC brands and how to bring its own AI features to the products was currently in the “pipeline”. For Yu, AI is not just about the hardware or software but more to do with the user experience. "Maybe a user cannot tell right now why they need AI because it's difficult to visualise when they are only experiencing adaptive AI. However, GenAI is also a key component for enhancing every single user experience,” he said. Lenovo, the world’s largest PC vendor by volume, is responding to the AI frenzy sweeping the technology industry with products that are ready to handle AI tasks. While Yu says different companies have different definitions of AI, even though the major difference comes down to cloud-based solutions versus on-device. “I think our definition is simple. We don't care about the TOPS," he added. TOPS or Tera Operations per Second, is a metric that measures the maximum throughput of a supercomputer or circuit board with multiple processors. "Maybe you need to have 40 TOPS of NPU performance, but even today, you see the criticism, we don't have that bar. Because eventually, it's how we make things happen." The critical point Yu was trying to make is how Lenovo will apply AI to its products. But the larger debate in the industry currently is around how to define an "AI PC" and whether a computer powered to handle artificial intelligence tasks differs from a regular PC. For Lenovo, however, the simplification of AI PCs is important to convey a clear message about what they can achieve with a computer that is tailor-made with the right hardware and software to handle AI and machine learning tasks. “For us, regardless of whether it offers 10, 40, or whatever TOPS of NPU performance, it depends on the usage. As long as they don't have the GPU inside, we call them essential AI PCs, which are meant for tasks like content creation. The other category is Pro AI PCs, which come with higher-end graphics cards." Microsoft is setting a minimum requirement for its AI PCs as having at least 16GB of DRAM and a neural processing unit (NPU) with 40 TOPS or more. The reality is no Windows PC processor shipping today meets the 40 TOPS requirement. Intel's Meteor Lake platform is under those requirements in NPU TOPS, but Intel’s Lunar Lake platform may hit the requirement when it ships later in 2024. Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite platform, which is expected to ship in the second half of 2024, should also meet Microsoft's performance requirements. At its Innovate event in Bangkok, Lenovo launched a new lineup of AI PCs, ranging from the high-end dual-screen Yoga 9i to a powerful new 16-inch Yoga Pro 9i laptop aimed at creatives, and to more affordable options like the 14-inch Lenovo Yoga Slim 7i and Yoga Pro 7. Each of the PCs showcased had several AI features, including a dedicated AI chip ("Lenovo AI Core Chip") inside the Yoga 9i which powers AI-driven optimisations for performance, battery life, and cooling efficiency. The company is also bundling its new Creator Zone with the new Yoga laptops, new software for creators and artists that leans heavily on generative AI to transform text-based descriptions and sketches into visuals. Lenovo intends to ship the Gen AI-based software to its PCs by late 2024. Yu says the use of Large Language Models (LLMs) to build AI that can generate content from text prompts is just the beginning, but there’s more to come. He emphasised that the AI solutions one can use today are more of a “learning” to improve the overall user experience. However, once the generative artificial intelligence in PCs is on full display, it will make a huge difference in people’s daily lives. Yu believes that generative AI as a completely on-device experience will make a real difference over a cloud-based setup when consumers start seeing the real use cases of artificial intelligence. Generative AI has quickly become much more than a buzzword after ChatGPT and other AI tools took the technology industry by storm. Yu said Gen AI will be central to the company’s PC strategy moving forward and will help cement its pole position as the largest seller of personal computers. But more than a PC vendor, Yu sees Lenovo as one of the ISVs that wants to develop its solutions. “We will try to differentiate ourselves by providing our solution, but we also work with other industry providers,” he said. The writer is attending Innovate 2024 in Bangkok at the invitation of Lenovo Thailand
