By now, you’re probably exhausted from all the talk of artificial intelligence (AI). From your smartwatch to your smartphone, your TV to your laptop, your web browser to now even your printer (we’ll explain), AI is permeating every facet of the tech industry and even beyond. At the HP Imagine conference, which took place at the company’s head office in Palo Alto, CA earlier this week, the company focused heavily on the technology. What does it all mean, and do we really need it?
AI Benefits Will Become the Norm
AI can mean so many things and it’s applied differently to every type of product. With a laptop, it can assist in everyday tasks, offer enhanced security, and foster creativity through platforms like generative AI. With your phone, it can make finding, organizing, editing, accessing, translating, transcribing, and creating information simpler and more seamless. With smart appliances, smart assistants can advise you when you’re running low on milk or automatically adjust to help you save energy.
Every company is going all in on AI, even ones using the term “AI” loosely to describe a smart assistant that already existed in the device or simplistic smart editing features. Full-fledged AI has a lot to offer, and core benefits that are more important than the most talked about ones.
When you think about AI, think about the smart TV. We use the term “smart TV” to describe a display with Wi-Fi connectivity and built-in access to streaming services. But realistically, no TV introduced in the last five-to-10 years isn’t a smart TV. You’d be hard-pressed to find a flat screen that doesn’t have the capability to connect to the Internet in some way. Some are smarter than others. But every model is, by all intents and purposes, smart.
The same may be the case for AI…eventually. Companies will stop touting their phones, laptops, and other devices as having AI. They just will. It will become an expectation. How that is realized through end products will vary. Every manufacturer has its own twist and unique features that capitalize on AI processing. But at the heart of AI is helping you leverage new capabilities that make your life easier and your work more productive. At HP Imagine, the company demonstrated many ways how, most notably with printers and laptops.
HP Print AI May Kickstart a Trend
One of the most unique ways HP showcased AI technology at HP Imagine is through printer assistance. HP is known as much for its printers as for its laptops and other tech devices and peripherals, including products for tertiary industries like enterprise and gaming. Up until now, there haven’t been huge advances in printing. The last big wave came in the form of cartridge-free printers that use refillable ink, which HP calls Smart Tank printers. But now, there’ HP Print AI.
Intelligent Assistance for Creative Projects
A feature coming involves an intelligent assistant that pops up at the side of the screen while you’re setting a print job to offer suggestions and assistance. It might help you design a last-minute anniversary card for your spouse. Like with generative AI platforms, tell it what type of image you want to use (maybe a personal photo), pick a setting, background, and the style of messaging you want, and the printer will be your personal Hallmark at home. You can even choose, order, and add a digital gift card right from the printer interface. That’s one less night in the doghouse.
Sure, you can send an evite. But Sue Richards, Division President and General Manager of Home Printing at HP, says “something physical is getting more and more meaningful as these digital natives are getting tired of everything being digital. It’s personal and feels more special. And if you need more inspiration, that’s where we can help you with AI at the point of print.”
Perfect Prints Without Extraneous Images and Text
For more practical, everyday use, there’s Perfect Output, now available in beta, which helps you print from sources like webpages (think an article or recipe) or spreadsheet without all that extraneous information you don’t need. Through the inclusion of AI, the printer can determine exactly what you want to print and intelligently reformat pages to only print that content. That could take the print job from an annoying 15 pages with gaps, text links, ads, and images to just one or two concise pages. This not only saves time and frustration, but also money on both paper and ink.
There’s further intelligence that can detect if a graph or table is missing a headline, for example, and suggest one. The automatic reformatting of content gives you option so the output is exactly as you envision.
Most people think about AI is something that exists in your PC or phone, while printers are considered an “offramp from a digital device,” explains Richards. “It’s a physical output. But because we own the PC, we own the printer, we understand that it’s really about how you apply AI to those customer outcomes. What do customers want to do?”
AI Set-up Assistance
Other elements of HP Print AI include helpful set-up assistance, great for those who deal with those dreaded phone calls from elderly parents or non-tech-savvy friends who are asking for remote help. When they don’t know what button to push or what to do next, AI assistance can be their personal IT person.
The Future of Printing
Will HP AI Print become the 21st Century version of the Clippit Office Assistant everyone despised? Let’s hope not. It has potential to help with everything from printer set-up to common print jobs and more creative ones. HP is bringing AI into the printing world in a logical way that will likely be replicated by competitors. As per the original analogy, an AI printer in the future may just be, well, a printer.
HP Print AI will be available on various HP printer models, and you’ll initially find it in the new HP Envy 6100 and Envy 6500 all-in-ones, which were introduced at the event.
AI Affords Benefits For Laptops Beyond AI
What about laptops? When it comes to AI, we focus so much on speeds and feeds like Tera Operations per Second (TOPs), the measure of the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in AI-equipped PCs. The higher the number, the better performing the computer will presumably be. And that’s what is at the crux of the AI experience when it comes to computers: performance enhancements.
AI Laptops Are Simply More Powerful
“It is a better PC by traditional metrics,” says Sam Chang, Division President of Consumer PC at HP of the company’s new AI-powered laptops. “By leveraging some of the tools we offer in AI Companion, it can fine tune and optimize settings so drivers are always up to date and personalized to that device. And you’re less likely to get the blue screen or reboot.”
All the flashy intelligent assistance features with AI, like generative AI, smart assistants, blurred camera backgrounds, and contextual awareness, are what’s most exciting to talk about than specs. But what’s most important to note is that AI PCs are generally more powerful computers, arguably the most powerful computers you can buy right now. HP’s new OmniBook Ultra Flip, the first convertible laptop to incorporate AI, affords generative AI, and has Intel Arc graphics, 16GB RAM, and a dedicated AI engine with up to 48 TOPs. It also has productivity tools like a built-in 9MP AI Poly Audio camera and works with an optional USB-C rechargeable tilt pen.
By design, for a laptop like the OmniBook Ultra Flip to support AI features, it needs to be powerful and robust. This model, for example, comes equipped with an Intel Core Ultra processor (Series 2) with a dedicated AI engine. The up to 20-hour battery life is impressive, especially since the computer runs more efficiently for intensive tasks like video conferencing. At US$1,450, which would likely translate to under $2,000 in Canada, that’s a decent cost for an overall powerful computer. AI is just the icing on the cake.
The same goes for the new commercial HP EliteBook X, coming in December 2024 with pricing TBA. Along with a next-gen AMD Ryzen Pro processor, it includes dual turbo fans to keep the computer cool and quiet. Wolf Security helps offload processor-intensive security tasks to the NPU, which preserves the CPU for all-day productivity.
There are other useful AI features relating to security. McAfee Smart AI Deepfake Detector, for example, can detect AI-generated audio and warn you that you might be receiving fraudulent data or misinformation. An AI-powered webcam sensor alerts you if someone is looking in on your device and automatically blurs the screen in response. That’s great for those who work in co-working or public spaces.
Rethinking the Laptop Experience
The inclusion of AI technology is also helping to redefine the overall laptop experience, which has not changed much over the last few decades. Our inputs methods have only evolved from a keyboard and mouse to a touchscreen and stylus. “With AI,” says Chang, “I think we can do a lot more with input, whether it’s gesture or voice.”
Voice control isn’t new, of course, but with more context-aware AI that can better understand the specific user, including the unique jargon and terminology you use and your habits, it has potential to fundamentally change how we interact with our laptops for the first time in a long time.
You Need AI, But Not Why You Think
You hear about all the cool things AI technology can do, and future potential for the technology. But the average person doesn’t necessarily need AI for these reasons. AI tech can reduce the time you spend on mundane tasks, and simplify arduous, monotonous work. It can distill information, provide helpful recommendations, and foster creativity.
“It’s not really about AI as a thing,” says Richards. “It’s about how does AI enable me to do things easier, with less friction, and give me back time to spend on doing things I love.”
Many of the most touted features of AI, then, are side benefits of the technology for most people. The core benefit of AI for the masses, especially when it comes to laptops, is a more powerful experience with the processing necessary to make everyday tasks a breeze.
“We probably need to do a better job at explaining usage cases,” adds Chang. “Not just ‘you should buy this laptop because it’s AI.’” It’s understanding, he adds, that creatives can do livestreaming right out of the box without paying for an additional service. They can use functions without training nor needing someone else to help.
“If someone was to ask me today ‘should I buy an AI computer?” he continues, “my first question would be ‘what are you looking to do?’” That’s what matters most. As AI technology evolves, it will become more and more useful for all types of people beyond the core group of creatives, professionals, freelancers, and students to which special features and third-party software appeal.
You don’t necessarily have to seek out AI computers right now. But soon, you probably won’t even have to. When you pop into your local tech shop to buy a new living room TV, do you ask if it’s a smart TV? Probably not. You already know it is. The same goes for laptops, and maybe even eventually printers on a larger scale. In time, every connected device will come with AI. How, why, and how often you use it will be entirely in your control. But leveraging the added power AI provides in every tech device is something everyone can get behind.