Analysts at Forrester have been consulting their Tarot cards and have concluded that 2025 will be the year of the AI PC.
According to Forrester’s “The Year of the AI PC is 2025” report, penned by principal analyst Andrew Hewitt, PC and chip manufacturers such as AMD, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Intel, and Nvidia announced AI PC innovations to arrive next year.
Approximately 50 AI PC models are available for purchase today, and multiple AI chips are ready for enterprise deployment. The report said Forrester expects certain roles with high computing needs, such as creatives, data scientists, and developers, to benefit substantially from AI PCs.
While employees have run AI on client operating systems (OS) for years – think background blur or noise cancellation – most AI processing still happens through cloud services such as Microsoft Teams.
The report said that AI PCs are disrupting the cloud-only AI model to bring that processing to local devices running any OS.
Forrester defines an AI PC as a PC embedded with an AI chip and algorithms specifically designed to improve the experience of AI workloads across the computer processing unit (CPU), graphics processing unit (GPU) and neural processing unit (NPU).
Following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the prospect of the AI PC – one that would take advantage of the immense opportunity of generative AI (GenAI) as well as other types of AI – quickly gained attention as leaders sought ways to bring AI to every employee, on every endpoint, across every organisation.
The AI PC has captured the industry’s imagination. Such devices promise to supercharge employee productivity. IT and business leaders foresee many use cases for GenAI, from content creation to meeting transcription to code development.
While corporate-approved GenAI applications, such as Microsoft Copilot, often run as cloud services, running them locally enables them to interact with local hardware, such as cameras and microphones, with less latency. Software developers will be able to use AI chips in PCs to enable new use cases, especially for creatives.
Open-source music production software company Audacity is working with Intel to deliver AI audio production capabilities for musicians, such as text-to-audio creation, instrument separation, and vocal-to-text transcription.
Photo and video enhancement software provider Topaz Labs enables users, via AMD’s Ryzen AI, to run powerful AI video and picture enhancement features on local PCs much faster than they could four years ago on GPU-enabled desktops.
An AI PC also offers a way to improve the collaboration experience. Dedicated AI chipsets will improve the performance of classic collaboration features, such as background blur and noise, by sharing resources across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs. On-device AI can render a much finer distinction between the subject and the blurred background. More importantly, the AI PC will also enable new use cases, such as eye contact correction, portrait blur, auto framing, lighting adjustment, and digital avatars.
The report said that another benefit of AI chipsets on PCs is that they can optimise device performance and longevity. Previous AI use cases were feasible on PCs, but they drained the battery quickly.
Adding an NPU will help preserve battery life while employees run sustained AI workloads. Component monitoring for clock speeds, fans or thermals will feed AI algorithms on the device to optimise its performance, reduce breaks and extend PC life. Running models locally will also reduce latency compared with cloud-hosted versions and enable employees to access them without an internet connection.
Other benefits include the ability to deliver personalised computing and support employee wellness.
AI PCs will learn a user’s preferences and behaviours over time and adjust accordingly. They can understand personal traits like accents and speech patterns through microphones to create more accurate email responses. They will also be able to learn individual productivity preferences, such as filtering out notifications and distracting content while a developer is trying to code or alert a salesperson when a high-value prospect emails back. Forrester believes the AI PC will even provide suggestions to users on how best to structure their day to support optimal productivity.
Data privacy and security are top concerns for GenAI, and 55 per cent of privacy decision-makers indicate that their organisation is developing privacy controls and policies for GenAI. The AI PC will give employees more control over what data stays local and what gets sent to the cloud. This will help avoid issues such as the use of personal data to train AI systems, copyright infringements and patent violations.
Running AI in the cloud is expensive. IT organisations will embrace AI PCs because running these models locally will significantly reduce cloud costs. An AI PC ranging from $1,000 (£780) to $3,000 (£2,340) per device, plus its associated software, costs pennies compared with hosting and running AI models in the cloud. This is a major reason why Apple and Samsung have pushed GenAI to the forefront of their operating systems.
Forrester forecasts that AI platform budgets will triple in 2024 to meet the demand for GenAI applications. Enterprise workloads will be cloud-dependent, increasing usage bills for customers on public cloud services.
This will allow digital workplace leaders to save cloud costs by pushing AI workloads to the PC. However, for most information workers, there aren’t enough game-changing applications for day-to-day work to drive rapid AI PC adoption.
