What is an AI PC and do you need one?

Imagine you’re running a restaurant. You’ve employed a team of chefs and given them a state-of-the-art kitchen to create all sorts of great food. For years this arrangement has worked well, but off late, you’ve been noticing an increasing demand for certain dishes. While your team and the tools at their disposal are great, they feel a tad overwhelmed with the increased demand.

In such a scenario, you could either set up a brand-new kitchen and have more hands on deck (an expensive affair) or simply set up a small section in the existing space to supplement the load on the main kitchen.

The PC is a kitchen?

What’s happening in this kitchen is very similar to what’s happening to PCs around the world. PCs were designed to produce a certain kind of work. The rise of Artificial Intelligence, however, has increased the strain on traditional PCs that were not designed for AI workloads. It’s possible to run AI on a regular PC, but the process will cost more energy and your system will run slower.

The term AI PC – which is actually a marketing term – broadly describes PCs that include a dedicated AI processor or NPU (Neural Processing Unit) designed for handling AI workloads (roti making).

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Now when you use, say, background blur in video or ask CoPilot to draft an email, that task is assigned to the NPU and not the CPU, which has been freed up to handle the work it used to perform earlier.

Such a design – CPU + NPU – offers a few key benefits:

1. Better battery life: Your laptop’s power consumption goes down, resulting in an increase in battery life. This happens because running AI on a regular CPU is a strain (less efficient), which causes a spike in power consumption.

2. Better performance: Since AI work is offloaded to a dedicated, low-power chip, AI performance gets a boost and regular PC performance also gets a boost as resources are freed up elsewhere.

3. More AI: Since there is dedicated AI hardware, software can be designed to better take advantage of it and offer newer experiences.

4. Better privacy and security: With a powerful NPU, AI processing can happen locally i.e. on your device, ensuring that data isn’t uploaded to a remote server that you have no control over. Such features are especially important when dealing with sensitive data such as work-related documents or family photos.

Microsoft CoPilot and AI PCs CoPilot+, and why it matters

To keep things simple, I’ll classify PCs as follows:

Traditional PC: This type of PC doesn’t have an NPU and can thus not run AI tasks efficiently. However, these do support many AI features, particularly if they have a powerful GPU. You won’t be missing out on too much and it’s primarily power consumption that goes up.

You’ll still be able to access features like background blur in meetings, neural filters in Photoshop, and internet- or cloud-based AIs like ChatGPT and CoPilot, but your device’s battery life might take a hit in some scenarios. These PCs are perfectly fine for regular use today, but as more apps start using AI, you’ll see their utility drop off over time.

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AI PC: These are PCs with NPUs. NPUs significantly accelerate AI workloads while lowering power consumption. As long as an app is designed to take advantage of an NPU, you will see a benefit of getting an AI PC.

The caveat here is that early AI PCs don’t have very powerful NPUs so their utility is more limited. It’s only later, more powerful models (usually branded CoPilot+) that are future-proof and capable of handling more advanced AI.

CoPilot and CoPilot+: Like Siri on Apple devices and Google Assistant on Google devices, CoPilot is Microsoft’s version of an AI. CoPilot is deeply integrated into Windows 11 and every modern PC supports CoPilot. Microsoft’s AI is more prominently visible in its Office 365 suite and as a search assistant in Windows.

If your PC has a powerful NPU and meets certain hardware requirements – you can find the specs below – Microsoft offers advanced, on-device AI features like image generation, and gives the device ‘CoPilot+’ branding.

CoPilot+, and why it matters

CoPilot+ refers to a more powerful class of AI PCs that can offer enhanced versions of the AI features already built into Windows. Regular AI PCs benefit from having an NPU, but those benefits are usually app specific.

ALSO READ: 5 ways Copilot+ PCs solve the biggest problems with AI PCs

A CoPilot+ branded AI PC on the other hand offers a tonne of additional features over what you’d find in a traditional PC or a less powerful AI PC. This includes:

– Image generation with Cocreator

– Advanced filters in the Microsoft Photos app

– Neural filters and magic masks in Photoshop, Lightroom, Da-Vinci Resolve, etc.

– Auto cut features in CapCut

– Windows Studio Effects such as better background blur on video calls, denoising of video, and background noise removal when speaking

– Dedicated CoPilot button, and more.

To get CoPilot+ branding, laptops must also offer the following specs:

Processor: AMD Ryzen AI 300 series, Intel Core Ultra 200V series, and Qualcomm Snapdragon X series

RAM: 16 GB DDR5 or LPDDR5

Storage: 256 GB SSD or UFS device

Note that many of the effects and features listed above are still available on Windows PCs that don’t have CoPilot+ branding or the requisite hardware, but as discussed earlier, PCs without NPUs will be under more strain when running these AI models. Secondly, some AI features like image generation and neural filters might be offloaded to the cloud and processed remotely, leading to potential privacy and security concerns.

Do I need an AI PC?

Our recommendation is simply that you should get an AI PC if it’s in budget, but depending on what you do, you might not feel like you’re missing out if you don’t get one. If you’re looking to future-proof your purchase or are expecting it to last a long time, an AI PC is again worth getting because there’s no escaping the fact that AI is here to stay.

AI integration is widespread and ever more apps are integrating AI features into their design, however, these features might not be useful to everyone and might not necessarily need an NPU. Let’s look at some use cases:

If you’re a writer, you tend to use Gemini for research, ChatGPT for feedback, and CoPilot in Word for a style check. Of these, Gemini and ChatGPT are cloud-based (accessible only over the internet), and only CoPilot+ requires an NPU. So, do you need CoPilot+? No. It’s convenient to have that integration, but you could just as easily use any other service or online document platform for a style and grammar check.

A gamer would need upscalers like FSR or DLSS to play games at 4K. For this use-case an AI PC won’t help, and you can instead focus on getting a laptop with a powerful AMD or Nvidia GPU.

ALSO READ: Your first post-pandemic laptop will be an AI PC

A photographer will need neural filters in Photoshop, access to AI-enhanced denoisers, and generative fill. Of these, only neural filters and denoisers work great with an NPU, but they do work (less efficiently or in the cloud) without one. In addition, a GPU would also help speed up processing. So ideally you’d need an AI PC with a good GPU.

As a manager who sits in a lot of meetings, long battery life is paramount and so is a great Teams or Zoom experience. Both attributes – battery life and quality audio/video in video conferencing apps – are enhanced by an AI PC and perhaps worth paying a premium for.

Types of AI PCs

Ignoring Macs, there are three platforms powering AI PCs. Here’s what you need to know:

AMD Ryzen AI 300 series: AMD has been producing NPUs for a lot longer than Intel has, giving it an edge in the design and efficiency department. The AI 300 also features a very powerful integrated GPU that’s more powerful than some entry-level gaming PCs. The GPU also helps in AI workloads, further enhancing AI performance at a lower cost.

Intel Core Ultra 200V series: This platform follows in Apple’s footsteps and integrates RAM into the CPU die itself. The advantage here is higher power efficiency and better responsiveness, but the price is higher and upgrades are expensive. The integrated GPU isn’t as capable as AMD’s but does work with the NPU to further enhance AI performance when needed.

If you have to choose between Intel and AMD, get an AMD machine if you care for gaming, otherwise just get whichever model is cheaper or has features (like display and design) that you like.

Qualcomm Snapdragon X series: This is a wildcard entry of sorts. The Snapdragon X is essentially a smartphone processor modified to run Windows so you get the expected benefits of smartphone-like battery life and ultra-low power consumption.

These laptops run cool and silent, are much slimmer than you’d expect, and can last for days without a charge. However, app compatibility is severely limited. The basic apps one would need for work and studies are supported – Chrome, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc. – but games, professional video editing programs, and 3D rendering apps, among others, run poorly or not at all.

A Snapdragon X device is great if all you need is a machine for light work (Office apps and browsing) and/or entertainment. Anything more and you’ll need to confirm that the apps you need are not just compatible, but that they’re performant on the Snapdragon X platform.

What to look for in an AI PC

To summarise, you need to look for the following features when getting an AI PC:

1. Microsoft CoPilot+ branding: This is the simplest way to confirm that you’re getting the most powerful and feature-packed AI PC experience. If in doubt, just pick up a CoPilot+ branded PC and you’ll be set.

2. A Ryzen AI 300 or Intel Core Ultra 200V series processor: This will ensure that you have the right kind of NPU. If you’re familiar with PCs and are fully aware of its limitations, the Snapdragon X is also a great option.

3. 16GB+ of RAM: AI is a very memory intensive program. If you’re going to be using AI features regularly, we’d recommend getting a PC with at least 16GB of RAM, but upgrade to 24 or 32GB if you can. More advanced users might be better off getting 64GB or more.

What to avoid when buying an AI PC

Avoid first-gen AI PCs. These are devices powered by AMD Ryzen 7xxxHS and Intel Core Ultra 1xx series processors. These early models had NPUs for AI acceleration, but were not powerful enough for CoPilot+ branding and advanced AI features. You’ll see some benefit from having an NPU, but performance will be limited and few apps support these older platforms.

At the end of the day, an AI PC, and particularly a CoPilot+ branded one, is good to have but still not a prerequisite for most people. If your workflow benefits from an NPU, get an AI PC. If not, get one anyway unless budget is a concern. If nothing else, your PC will at least be equipped to face whatever our AI-powered future holds.