Intel’s new AI PC processor will ship in the Acer Swift laptop later this year, but what exactly is AI on a laptop supposed to be good for? How would somebody use it?
In other words, what’s the killer app that AI will provide to laptop users?
At Intel Innovation, CEO Pat Gelsinger announced at least four applications running natively on PCs and unconnected from the cloud that can take advantage of the company’s upcoming Intel Core Ultra processors. Such PCs become true edge devices in the exploding IoT world. They include a new Neural Processing Unit packaged alongside a CPU and GPU.
The most user-compelling of the Core Ultra-capable applications, based on interviews with several analysts who attended, was shown by Rewind AI, which advertises itself as a “truly personalized AI” that is “powered by everything you’ve seen, said or heard” which is stored locally.
Dan Siroker, co-founder and CEO or Rewind AI, took the Intel Innovation keynote stage to demonstrate how he was able to tell a desktop chatbot to write an email to investor Sam Altman asking him to catch up on recent activities on funding. The AI was able to search his emails and laptop chat conversations to then share what had happened recently in several paragraphs.
Using OpenVINO (instead of Chat GPT 4) and Core Ultra with Wi-Fi turned off, Siroker was able to ask his computer “What is Pat’s favorite sound?” Taking data from Pat’s machine it found his favorite sound was his granddaughter’s voice calling him ‘Papa’.
“This to me is killer app domain,” Gelsinger said. In addition to its personalization of a person’s laptop, with the Rewind AI app working locally, it would keep all the user’s data private, he added.
(Gelsinger's entire keynote is available on Youtube.)
When the Rewind AI app was shown, there was an obvious response by developers in the room of appreciation, noted Karl Freund, principal analyst at Cambrian-AI Research. “To me, the Intel interest in an AI PC is in building ecosystems of really any desktop applications, to tie all ecosystems together,” Fruend said.
It’s interesting that AMD, an Intel competitor, doesn’t seem to have any plans in providing an AI PC, he noted.
Another early user of Intel’s Core Ultra who took the stage was Deep Render, which used AI for 5x better video compression performance. The company showed video comparisons with traditional compression technologies, revealing a perceptible improvement in video clarity.
During his keynote, Gelsinger said the powerful AI capabilities being contemplated by companies for use in data centers will now be in the hands of individuals, a democratization of the power of AI. “We see the AI PC as a sea change moment in innovation,” he said.
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