Looking ahead: Are AI PCs the next big thing?

Do IT pros in charge of procurement need to think about AI-enabled PCs? Or is this hardware only suitable for a niche audience?

AI-enabled PCs are designed to run AI and machine-learning workflows on local hardware, rather than relying completely on services delivered via the cloud. Linn Huang, research VP of devices and displays at IDC, said that IT professionals should, at the very least, explore how on-device AI could impact their organization. 

For example, an employee using an AI-enabled PC might rely on local AI software to take notes on meetings, create action items, or analyze small datasets. The device can enable those AI functions without excessively chewing through battery life thanks to the neural processing unit (NPU), which is specialized architecture designed to facilitate AI operations.

These devices are also expensive: Huang added that organizations might hold off on purchasing because of the current prices, which can vary between $1,200 and $2,500, nearly twice what a “traditional” PC might cost.

“NPUs that hit the market, they are designed to ‘run AI better,’ and so because of that, we’re getting a lot of attention being paid to on-device AI or AI PCs,” Huang said. “We’re not really seeing…the AI PC used to its full potential in the enterprise setting too much these days, but…again we’re still very early on the category.”

Is the AI-enabled PC right? Zach Edwards, a staff threat researcher on the Infloblox threat intelligence team, pointed to the cost structure of PCs running AI locally as a potential cause for concern.

“Somebody using it doesn’t realize that every time they ask the question to their PC, it’s costing the company money, and you could suddenly have giant bills on the back end, and now it certainly impacts small- or medium-sized organizations,” Edwards said.

Is anyone using this? Whether or not someone is using an AI PC, Huang said, it hasn’t impacted the adoption of broader AI services like ChatGPT or Claude. He said he has started to run OpenClaw locally, but hasn’t found a “killer use case” yet.

Edwards also reported using various devices that run AI locally, and has tried to turn on “all the features.” While he’s also just trialing the hardware, he said he would “never put sensitive information into it” or give it a true threat intel test by letting it parse through his work information. Instead, he’s using it to do tasks like searching for files.

“The times I’ve tried to do anything more complex with it, it’s not built for that right now,” Edwards said. “It’s really built for asking a semi-complex question to help find something on your device, and maybe at some point in the future that is going to get more complex…and maybe we’re going to get to a place where you can change your operating system via AI, but the ones I’ve used, it’s more just like an advanced search feature.”

To infinity, and running AI locally! Agentic AI could serve as a turning point for AI-enabled PCs because agents generally complete tasks without human oversight, versus GenAI, which requires constant prompting. Huang said that once organizations move into the realm of agentic, they assign an agent to drive outcomes.

The “real, full potential of AI,” Huang said, is the ability to offload employee’s low impact work and automate it so that they don’t have to think about it.

Victoria Kinnealey, VP of strategic revenue at Halcyon, told IT Brew that leaders considering AI-enabled PCs should figure out how they fit into the broader business strategy, which should include a company-wide, non-siloed discussion on next steps.

Halcyon recently partnered with Dell to launch AI-enabled PCs that reportedly have ransomware-resilient features like local monitoring for data exfiltration protection as well as rapid file recovery.

“That’s a big thing with AI, it touches everything,” Kinnealey said. “Everybody needs to have a seat at that vision table, and everybody needs to be aligned on the security posture of this.”

The safety dance. While the current ecosystem surrounding these AI-enabled PCs is something that few people have asked for, Edwards said, it’s something that “everyone is going to get.”

“From a cybersecurity perspective, while there’s a lot of interesting market choices and market facts that we could be debating, a lot of us are most concerned with prompt injection attacks,” Edwards said. “When you think about these local models and AI-enabled PCs, the worst-case scenario is you get your AI-enabled PC, you turn it on day one, you prompt it with some things, it goes out and navigated some website…and suddenly your device downloads malware.”