HP’s new AI computer raises the stakes in the battle of tech hardware

HP said this week it plans to release what it calls “the world’s highest performance AI PC,” raising the stakes in the battle among tech giants to infuse their technology with artificial intelligence.

Much of what the public thinks of as artificial intelligence is cloud-based, requiring an internet connection, but more tech companies are leaning into hardware that’s ingrained with AI from the start: Apple and Microsoft have both bragged about their respective AI hardware capabilities in recent weeks, while HP competitors like Samsung and Dell also rolled out their own AI-ready, Windows-based laptops.

HP’s computers are powered by an advanced chip that can run AI commands without an internet connection and largely appear aimed at improving how people do their jobs — rather than just for fun — including a camera that can track your face while you move around during meetings, an on-device AI “companion,” and the ability to build a library of documents that you can query with a large language model-based chatbot.

AI computers are expected to make up nearly 60% of all global PC shipments by 2027, IDC data shows. The PC industry saw a massive decline over the last few years, but rebounded this year: HP reported its first increase in PC sales in two years in the last year, thanks to a rise in commercial sales. Consumer sales, meanwhile, slipped.

The company’s new AI computers will be available for consumer sale, but it’s also heavily aimed at offices.

“Every board of directors is asking their executive staff to make AI real,” said Alex Cho, president of HP’s Personal Systems business.

The rollout of the new PC feels like an effort from HP to reduce skepticism surrounding AI laptops — and whether they can actually do more than popular web-based systems.

“All the talk around AI PCs has been ambition and opportunity,” Cho told me, “and now people have been asking us, ‘So what can I do?’”

At an event for journalists, analysts, and industry partners in New York last week, Cho and other HP executives reiterated the message that they want to “make AI real,” which was repeated in marketing materials for the new PCs. And apps like Zoom and an AI-powered DJ software showed off how they benefit from the tech upgrades.

I got some brief hands-on time with one of the new AI-infused laptops, and found it has some helpful work functions, like the ability to create the custom library. Realistically, though, the tools will only be used in concert with cloud-based systems. As I queried HP’s on-device AI companion chatbot, I also had the option of pulling up Microsoft’s Copilot bot, which can search the web.

It all gave me the sense that we’re heading toward a future of work where we’ll have to wade through a variety of different bots with differing capabilities, datasets, and access to the internet.

“We think it’s going to be a hybrid environment,” Cho told me.

Another benefit of a localized AI is security. Cho pointed out that a law firm that wants to query sensitive documents, or someone parsing through medical records, would rather not have to first upload that information to a cloud-based AI system.

For some office workers who get the new HP PCs — or any AI computer, for that matter — many of the advancements may go unnoticed, and instead will simply feel like standard technological improvements that come with a laptop upgrade, like a better camera and battery.

Compared to some generative AI advancements, it’s not necessarily flashy stuff, which could make AI PCs a harder mainstream sell.

The push comes as we enter an “AI-in-everything” era, which could make users feel disillusioned, Chris Stokel-Walker wrote in Fast Company. “The less satisfying people’s experience with these AI-powered tools, the quicker they’re likely to tire of the tech.”