How Lenovo is trying to make AI PCs relevant for CIOs

As PC vendors continue to launch multiple variations of AI PCs, the promises of Microsoft Copilot and Copilot+ PC have demonstrated little relevance to enterprises, who are yet to see enough use cases to justify the purchase. However, Lenovo is trying to change that with its own AI assistant, AI Now.

Based on Meta’s Llama 3.0, Lenovo AI Now is a small language model that focuses on a limited number of tasks such as document organization and device management, but does it locally, so users don’t have to worry about exposing their data to the outside world, and tasks such as document summaries can be done even on an airplane, without an internet connection.

The inspiration for AI Now comes from Copilot’s limited success as a PC assistant. “I think at the launch of Copilot in June last year, there was a promise of more, and they had to pull back. I think it’s going to take some time for us to see wide-scale deployment, especially for some of the features like Recall, which they [Microsoft] showed and then came back off of,” said Tom Butler, VP for worldwide commercial portfolio and product management at Lenovo.

“For AI Now, we have used a very focused local model experience. We’re not trying to be cloud. We’re demonstrating just really two things. One is the knowledge assistant, which uses your personal knowledge base; you put specific sets of files, documents into that knowledge base. Then you can run queries, comparisons, summarizations, and work through just that set of documents,” Butler said.

The other aspect is that of a PC assistant that the user can instruct to change their PC settings without having to navigate the Settings app, by simply telling it, for example, “turn on dark mode.”

Challenges with Copilot+ PC

Privacy issues related to Microsoft Recall, which was touted as one of the key use cases for Microsoft Copilot+ PC over a typical AI PC, have put a dent in Microsoft’s positioning, said Udit Singh, vice president, Everest Group.

“As such, the business case for Microsoft Copilot+ is weak today. However, this is not uncommon with Microsoft, as it has a tendency to start with a weak business case initially, but then beef up its offering over time,” Singh said.

Other experts also struggle to see why enterprises would want to buy an AI PC. “At this stage, AI PCs do not offer enough compelling value to justify large-scale investment, particularly for enterprises with existing AI capabilities in cloud or data center environments,” said Eric Helmer, CTO at Rimini Street. “Many AI workloads can already be effectively managed without requiring a dedicated neural processing unit (NPU) on every employee’s device.”

As many enterprises are already cautious with IT spending, initiatives that provide immediate and measurable ROI will remain their priority. Helmer pointed out that investing in AI PCs today could mean paying a premium for capabilities that may soon become accessible through standard hardware and software advancements. “Instead of reacting to vendor-driven cycles, CIOs should assess whether AI PCs align with their broader IT modernization strategies and whether the investment makes sense given their organization’s specific needs,” he said.

PC vendors like Lenovo are moving in the right direction by developing on-device AI solutions, arguably the most secure form of genAI, said Himani Reddy, PC research manager at Canalys.

“This approach addresses enterprises’ top concern: data privacy,” Reddy argued.“At this stage, the market has limited options, and consumers must choose to either adopt the available solutions or wait for future developments. Unless vendors develop their own personal AI for PCs, like Lenovo’s aggressive push in AI with applications like ‘AI Now’ and HP’s ‘AI Companion,’ Copilot+ PC remains the primary option. Although there are privacy concerns associated with Copilot, it remains a more secure option compared to publicly available generative AI models, which enterprises may be hesitant to adopt.”

Move to agentic AI

While Lenovo’s entry into the AI PC world has started with a localized AI assistant, the company plans to transform this into a platform that will allow enterprises to choose from multiple LLMs and agentic AI offerings from vendors such as OpenAI, Meta, or even DeepSeek.

“When you think of the North Star vision that we have as a company, we have two statements. One is smarter AI for all; we want to deliver this at every price point,” Butler said.

The other thing that Lenovo is trying to achieve is to turn the PC into the digital twin of the user. “If each of these devices is operating as our bespoke, unique voice, our digital twin, and I can go ask AI Now, ‘plan my flight to the US,’ and it just goes off and does that for me, that time saving can be immense,” Butler said.

To create the digital twin, Lenovo plans to take the agentic AI path. With agentic AI, Butler said, AI Now will move from being merely a personal assistant to a digital twin that can extract the maximum value out of the hardware.

Butler said that Lenovo is working with multiple software vendors to integrate more LLMs and AI agents to make the digital twin a reality.