How Advanced Processors Support the Rise of ‘Invisible’ AI

During the ongoing artificial intelligence hype cycle, business leaders and tech industry observers have been searching for the “killer” AI application — the ultimate use case that will validate the billions of dollars being poured into the technology.

But maybe that’s not the best way to think about this new technology. Consider: What’s the internet’s killer app? Social media, e-commerce, education? The answer is that there is no killer internet application. Instead, we simply use it for pretty much everything.

As advanced neural processing unit (NPU) chips deliver new capabilities to computing devices, we’re going to see a similar thing happen with AI: As the technology matures, it will take cues from how users work, eventually helping people throughout the day in sometimes invisible ways. AI-enabled PCs will be key to this growth, powering features that operate quietly in the background to enhance how we work, communicate and create.

In recent years, video collaboration has become a cornerstone of office life. Customers, colleagues and partners want to seamlessly communicate via clear audio and video. AI is already making this experience better, in ways that most users likely don’t even notice.

The most obvious example is real-time transcription and automated meeting summarization — a feature that is relatively new but has become accepted as commonplace. As AI technology improves, we’re likely to see even more advanced features. For instance, I might be able to speak in my first language, Portuguese, while my voice is heard in English on the other end. Also, NPUs will allow AI-enabled laptops to offer features such as noise removal, smart framing, background removal and automatic eye tracking. That means if a dog is barking outside your window, or you move your chair to avoid a sunbeam, you won’t have to worry about the noise or changing background disrupting an important meeting. The AI-enabled software will handle it for you.

Cybersecurity is the classic example of a thing that users pretty much never notice — unless something goes wrong. In AI-enabled PCs, security software uses AI to detect threats that more traditional forms of scanning might miss. And since this processing all happens on the NPU (rather than the main processor), it doesn’t slow down users’ work. 

Looking beyond security, local AI processing also powers enhanced search, helping users to quickly find documents or emails pertaining to a certain topic. In addition to saving users time, this helps organizations maintain data privacy and safety standards. Since processing happens locally, they may avoid the need to move sensitive documents to the cloud.

Most employees aren’t looking to spend their days experimenting with new AI workflows. They’re busy, and to the extent that they want to use AI at all, they want the technology to assist them with what they’re already doing rather than adding to their workload. That’s when NPUs come into play. 

Along with powering assistive features such as Microsoft’s Copilot AI companion tool, NPUs free up processing power and dramatically increase battery life for users in ways they may not even notice. This is exactly what we mean when we talk about “invisible AI,” something that users don’t have to think about, but something they’ll definitely appreciate.