Partner content: AI PCs’ most valuable use cases
Computing’s recent AI PC coverage has explored the state of the market, current plans, and sentiments around hardware. However, for end user organisations, use cases will be the most pressing consideration. The practical application of AI PC’s NPUs will ultimately determine the business case and ROI that CIOs must always deliver.
With that in mind, Computing’s latest research on the topic asked IT leaders which business departments could benefit from the provision of AI PCs. Unsurprisingly, IT and technology teams ranked highest, thanks to their existing skills and technical use cases – or, indeed, specialist AI functions.
Beyond this, customer services, marketing, and design or creative departments were seen as the most fertile soil. The former of these is often associated with the efficiencies of conversational AI or chat bots, while marketing and creative teams are best placed to leverage GenAI’s ability to convincingly and rapidly render images, text and other mediums – thereby making existing processes more efficient.
Drilling down further still into specific use cases we asked those surveyed which applications could most effectively draw on the local AI processing muscle offered AI PCs. We’ve distilled their open text responses into a representative selection of examples:
Applications that would benefit most from AI PCs
- Microsoft 365
- Email & meeting summaries
- Software development
- Business intelligence and advanced analytics
- Drafting HR letters & onboarding
- Customer communications
- Marketing applications
- Security monitoring
- Product design & digital twins
- ERP & finance
Empowering employees
Confirming our findings so far around use cases and suitable applications, when asked to rate AI PC features in terms of how beneficial they would be to their organisations, those surveyed were most optimistic about accelerated workflows and greater productivity. This received an average score of 6.9 out of 10, with 45 per cent rating it an eight or higher.
Yet, the most noteworthy finding was perhaps ‘improved employee experience’, ranked second. It runs counter to traditional arguments against AI, around it usurping human-led tasks. The pervasive sentiment, according to this research, is more one of augmentation – AI PCs are geared towards allowing their users to become more productive, creative and innovative.
Wrapped around all this is the potential for greater security. With local hardware-level AI processing being able to lend its hand to the sorts of security monitoring and analysis that were previously impossible. There are also security benefits to running AI tasks locally, instead of offloading them to the cloud – minimising the attack surface and exposure to public networks.
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What can AI PCs do today?
Having explored end user expectations and hopes around AI PC use cases, here are just a few example applications available today:
Identity and access management: NPUs are already enabling optimised Windows Hello processing for facial recognition login.
Enhanced collaboration: Intel AI PCs can use built-in noise suppression to enhance video calls, without draining your battery.
- Boosted productivity: AI PCs draw on their NPUs to save time organising your calendar, drafting emails, and even summarising documents or meeting notes.
- Real-time AI-enhanced camera features: Laptops like Dell’s Latitude 9420 use AI-powered webcams for auto-framing, auto-background blur, and lighting enhancements during video calls. Several video-conferencing solutions offer similar features that also leverage NPUs.
- Real-time malware detection: Windows Defender uses AI-powered threat detection and, through NPUs, the system can run these AI models locally for real-time threat analysis without relying on cloud-based services.
- Battery life optimisation: Intel Evo-certified laptops use AI to manage power consumption efficiently by dynamically adjusting and optimising performance.
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This Article is sponsored by Intel