The Proliferation of AI-Enabled PCs at CES: What Does It Mean for You?

AI PCs were ubiquitous at CES 2024, featuring new chips from Intel and AMD with dedicated NPUs to accelerate AI tasks locally. However, early implementations have largely focused on creator workloads, with NPU improvements not yet compelling for everyday users. Examples included HP’s Omen Transcend, Acer’s Swift laptops, and MSI’s local AI engine for Zoom and Teams calls, as well as the AI Artist app. Lenovo’s AI Now suite, designed for text input-based features, showed promise with practical uses, but is still in the experimental stage and will initially launch in China. Nvidia’s presence at the show highlighted the company’s leadership in AI development, showing off practical local AI tools for GeForce owners, including DLSS, RTX Video Super Resolution, and Nvidia Broadcast. The Chat with RTX application was particularly impressive, running locally on Mistral or Llama LLMs and allowing users to ask questions about local files or specific YouTube videos. Overall, while NPUs are just beginning to appear in computers, the software tapping into them is still in early stages, while Nvidia’s existing AI applications for GeForce users are already driving genuinely useful experiences.