Last week HP had its HP Imagine AI event in New York where HP stepped away from its competitors by moving to the next phase of the AI PC roll out: applications. With every vendor initially using similar Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite processors, the hardware (with some exceptions like number and type of ports and screen resolution and type) is pretty generic. But the issue with AI PCs right now is the lack of AI apps to run on them. Microsoft initially launched two apps: Recall (which was pulled back due to privacy concerns and poor positioning) and Cocreator, which is cool but basically a version of the more widely available Dall E.
That’s not a particularly impressive start, and Microsoft’s lack of marketing funding and execution damaged the roll out significantly. It is interesting to note that Microsoft has had some of the most capable marketing experts I’ve ever met, but typically, they aren’t the ones who have the authority to set budget or execution plans, and that led to screw ups like this one.
HP rightly saw the exposure and has focused aggressively on licensing and creating apps that make its AI PCs more useful than those that ship without apps. You need apps that use the NPUs. Otherwise, there isn’t much point to the AI PCs.
Why Do you Need an AI PC?
The reason is that for AI to work personally, it needs to have low latency, be inexpensive to use, yet be able to work regardless of connectivity. This means that while AI in the cloud isn’t going away anytime soon, it will, when given the choice, be better for the user to run AI locally rather than in the cloud. This is because cloud resources have high latency, meaning the responses from the cloud AI will vary based on the cloud loading of the AI and the network loading of the AI service. As AI becomes more widely used, it will become less useful due to that loading-introducing latency and other performance issues.
In addition, using cloud services for AI can be extremely expensive because AI loads are resource intensive, while running the same loads locally is inexpensive and the latency is reduced to the speed of the hardware and loading of the local NPU.
While we typically say “better, faster, cheaper, or pick any two,” with the AI PC you potentially get all three benefits because with a localized AI, a user should get a better experience than a cloud implementation (better as in more personalized and private), it is faster due to the near elimination of latency, and it is potentially far cheaper because you own the NPU, you don’t have to rent cloud resources.
HP’s Application Support
Buyers follow applications to hardware, not the other way around. We’ve seen this with game consoles. A game like Halo can drive people to buy the hardware, but if there isn’t any content you want to run on that hardware, it is unlikely to be effective. One really interesting part of the HP roll out is that it’s doing much of it with direct advice from NVIDIA, which is a surprisingly perceptive and unique use of this vendor. Right now, NVIDIA is so far ahead in AI it has become an invaluable resource with regard to AI direction and implementation.
Some of the applications and utilities HP shared at Imagine include TechSage which focuses on enterprise user problems by unlocking four aspects of productivity that include cost efficiency, productivity optimization, AI-driven security, privacy protections and improved agility.
Virtual Sapiens is an AI tool that provides real-time coaching for presenters. It is invisible to those on the other end of a video call, but it provides the presenter with timely advice on how to focus their audiences and improve on engagement and information transfer.
Loccus.ai: This is a utility that can identify whether a voice is coming from a real person or an AI, potentially helping guard against Phishing attacks and scam artists.
Luminar neo is an advanced AI-driven photo editor that provides real-time color correction, balance and exposure control while optimizing battery use. This tool will be especially useful to novice photographers.
djayPro is an automated DJ for playing music at parties, allowing the user (or temp DJ) to not only do a better job but enjoy the party more.
Cephable focuses on people with disabilities and uses the NPU very heavily. It promises to provide accessibility without compromise. It tracks head and mouth movement to move the cursor, making it a viable tool for quadriplegics.
Wrapping Up:
HP has come to the AI race ready to play. Identifying the current exposure with AI PCs (the lack of apps), it has a robust Snapdragon X Elite laptop line, but it also has an AMD solution coming that has 55 TOPs while most other AMD AI PCs can only operate at 50 TOPS.
I’ve been using one of HP’s Snapdragon X Elite laptops, the HP EliteBook Ultra, this last week while traveling and was impressed with its battery life and performance. As we add apps to this offering, it will become even more compelling. HP gets that, so it’s robustly partnering to create an ever-richer app ecosystem with this new class of laptops.
Nicely done!
