A Larger Wave Of AI PCs Is Coming. Are Businesses Ready?

As a growing number of AI PC options for businesses hit the market, industry analysts and solution provider executives believe there are multiple impediments to businesses adopting such devices or taking advantage of their AI capabilities, including security concerns.

When Microsoft revealed the first batch of Copilot+ PCs with advanced AI capabilities in May, the appeal to businesses was limited: the laptops didn’t use tried and trusted x86-based processors, and they mainly consisted of premium designs for consumers.

But this will change over the next year as a larger wave of AI PCs become available for business users from a variety of OEMs ranging from Lenovo and HP Inc. to Dell Technologies and others building Windows-based computers.

“Our general strategy is we innovate in the premium segment, and we make it mainstream. And you’ll see a lot of that mainstreaming happening [next] year,” said Alex Cho, president of HP’s Personal Systems division, in a September interview with CRN.

Since AI PCs started to appear in 2023, one of their defining attributes has been the inclusion of a neural processing unit (NPU) to handle sustained AI workloads alongside the CPU and GPU for other kinds of local processing in the computer’s system-on-chip.

But now the Windows PC ecosystem is coalescing around Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs, which require a minimum NPU performance of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to deliver advanced AI features such as live captions, image generation or the controversial Recall search feature that was made available for testing in mid-November.

While the first Copilot+ PCs released earlier this year use Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X system-on-chips, OEMs are now starting to release PCs with recently released x86-based AMD Ryzen and Intel Core processors that were expected to support Copilot+ features with a free Windows update in November.

At the same time, Apple in October started to roll out its first advanced AI features under the umbrella name of Apple Intelligence, which is available not only to Mac computers with its M-series system-on-chips but also iPads and iPhones released from the past few years.

This means businesses will have a growing number of options for AI PCs, including those with lower price points for mainstream users. A February forecast from research firm Gartner said AI PC shipments were expected to more than double in 2025 to 116 million units, which would account for 43 percent of estimated total PC shipments that year.

But while the share of AI PCs available in the market is expected to grow significantly next year, industry analysts and solution provider executives believe there are multiple impediments to businesses adopting such devices or taking advantage of their AI capabilities.

Bob Venero, CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based solution provider Future Tech Enterprises, told CRN that the topic of AI PCs has yet to come up in conversations with customers, which include Fortune 500-type companies, about refreshing their fleets of PCs.

“It's not like, ‘Hey, we want to start rolling out AI PCs in the environment,’” said Venero, whose company is No. 76 in CRN’s 2024 Solution Provider 500 list.

But Venero (pictured above) also sees his company as sort of an anomaly because of its focus on large enterprises. He suspects AI PCs will get picked up quicker by smaller businesses, particularly startups who are nimbler and want to be on the cutting edge.

“Because they can build around it, No. 1. No. 2, [it’s] less risk for them. And No. 3, they need they can leverage the AI capabilities to do more with less, where they’re not as mature in their company’s journey,” he said.

Security Seen As Ongoing Impediment To AI PC Adoption

For wider adoption of AI PCs to occur, Venero thinks solution providers need to work closely with customers on how they can use advanced AI applications without creating any security or privacy risks, which he believes are the top concerns among businesses.

“It all comes around to the security, the guardrails and the risk vector associated with can they be deployed within an organization with the right controls to avoid having any” intellectual property, healthcare information or otherwise sensitive information leaking, according to the solution provider executive.

Jack Gold, principal analyst at Northborough, Mass.-based J. Gold Associates, told CRN that while he expects 85-90 percent of new PC purchases by enterprises to be AI PCs within three years, he also sees security concerns as the main reason for businesses not wanting to buy such devices or use their AI capabilities for now.

“A lot of companies don’t know if they want to give AI to their end users,” he said.

While PC and chip vendors have said that AI PCs can provide a more secure AI experience than cloud-based services by processing data locally, Gold said the advent of AI-powered desktop applications could still open up considerable security concerns.

The main issue, according to Gold, is the same as one of the AI PC’s central appeals: the promise that AI applications could help users more easily access, summarize or analyze proprietary company data. While that may improve productivity and convenience, it could also make such data more easily available to hackers who gain access to a user’s PC through social engineering tricks, including phishing.

“If you’re able to generate more data locally, then you’re also increasing your exposure,” he said.

This is a problem Microsoft has had to address with its Recall feature, which is meant to help users more easily find things they have done on their Copilot+ PCs by letting them perform a natural language search against screenshots that are taken every few seconds.

When Microsoft revealed Recall as the flagship feature of Copilot+ PCs, privacy and security experts immediately raised concerns about how creating a central store of screenshots could give a bad actor easy access to all sorts of sensitive information.

The concerns prompted Microsoft to delay the release of Recall so that it could develop security safeguards and allow time for user testing. As announced by Microsoft, these security enhancements include requirements for Windows features such as virtualization-based security and Windows Hello for biometric authentication.

While Gold thinks security concerns may hold up businesses from fully embracing AI PCs for now, he believes most of them will eventually come around as vendors like Microsoft iron out issues with applications or features like Recall.

“Companies forever have had employees use tools that the employees think make their life easier, but the end result could lead to security issues,” he said.

Businesses Are Still Waiting For Killer Apps

Outside of security issues, another pressing topic for AI PCs is software availability. While Microsoft and some ISVs have started to push out applications that can take advantage of the AI PC’s local processing capabilities, there aren’t too many of them right now.

“Right now, a lot of IT managers, a lot of the tech vendors themselves are a bit hard-pressed to elucidate three killer use cases, especially ones that are sort of enterprise-facing,” said Linn Huang, research vice president for displays and devices at research firm IDC.

However, Huang said Microsoft and other vendors, like Intel, have been pushing to enable and generate excitement for a wide variety of third-party AI PC uses cases.

Intel, for instance, is working with more than 100 ISVs to enable over 300 AI-powered features on AI PCs through its AI PC Acceleration Program.

“There’s a lot of AI features that are going to be coming out in the pipeline next year,” he said.

But until that groundswell of killer apps happens, Huang thinks most AI PC purchases by businesses now should be seen as future proofing.

“Buying an AI PC, it might not do the things you hoped it would do, but in 12 months’ time, it's going to do a lot of things that you otherwise wouldn't have imagined,” he said.

A Lack Of Awareness Hinders Interest

Another issue hindering interest in AI PCs is general lack of awareness, which Intel recently highlighted in a survey of 6,000 adults in the United Kingdom, France and Germany.

In the Intel-commissioned survey released last month, it was found that 86 percent of consumers “have never heard of or used an AI PC—yet 40 percent would consider one for their next upgrade once they understand the benefits.”

Harry Zarek, president of Ontario, Canada-based Compugen, No. 60 on CRN’s 2024 SP 500 list, said his company is focusing on educating its customers and “understanding how they see AI as a strategy in the business.”

“We’re encouraging [customers] to dabble, to put their toes in the water, so to speak, and begin to understand what it can do for you and the whole bunch of very simple use cases and workloads and activities that can be enhanced by the use of AI, whether it's Copilot or OpenAI or whatever you want,” he said.