IFA 2024: how artificial intelligence enters the home with PCs and robots

Watchword: artificial intelligence. And perhaps it could not be otherwise. The current IFA in Berlin, Europe's most important technology trade fair, is an agglomeration of innovations that all seem to gravitate around the magic acronym: 'AI'. Because the time has come for generative artificial intelligence to become 'on device', i.e. to find a place on the devices we use every day: from smartphones to PCs, right up to robots that perform domestic tasks.

At IFA, some of this was shown, starting with the most important components to drive AI: processors. The silicon giants arrived in Berlin laden with novelties, all aimed at a market that is said to be growing rapidly, that of AI PCs, i.e. personal computers with artificial intelligence, which will soon transform PCs as we know them, and also their market.

It was mainly Qualcomm and Intel that brought the most important news. The company led by Cristiano Amon, leader in the smartphone chip market with the successful Snapdragon family, decided to bring its chips to PCs a few months ago, and at IFA presented the 8-core Snapdragon X Plus. A processor that in terms of performance, but above all in terms of price (lower than its predecessors) takes Qualcomm a new step in the world of laptops: bringing AI PCs to a more consumer level, because it is closer to the pockets of the average user.

Instead, Intel presented its x86 Ultra 200V series processor family, which impressed analysts well. Performance and energy efficiency seem to be the strong points of these processors for AI PCs, at a difficult time for Intel, where a leap in innovation is needed. Clearly, alongside the new processors, there was a long list of manufacturers at IFA, who presented new PCs with AI on board. Starting with Samsung, which launched the Galaxy Book 5 Pro 360 (with Intel processor) and the Galaxy Book 4 Edge (with Snapdragon processor). Among the Copilot+ PCs, there were also Lenovo, Honor, Acer and Asus, which unveiled the Zenbook S 14 and S 16, Vivobook S 14 and ExpertBook P Series (the latter dedicated to professionals, with highly anticipated artificial intelligence skills).

"Users are very interested in artificial intelligence functions, but not everyone has yet understood which applications are the most useful," explains Pier Giorgio Furcas, sales director of Honor Italia, the Chinese giant that here in Berlin presented the V3, an ultra-thin foldable smartphone that integrates AI functions such as a technology that reduces reading fatigue, particularly for those who are short-sighted, and then Google Cloud services such as real-time translation, both live and from an audio track.