Dell Reveals People Don't Care About AI in PCs – and a New Truly Embarrassing Windows 11 Fail
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
Dell reveals people don't care about AI in PCs - and a new truly embarrassing Windows 11 fail shows why
Dell is telling it straight as far as the contemporary world of PCs goes, with the computer maker bluntly explaining that consumers aren't buying laptops based on AI abilities.
PC Gamer reports (as flagged by The Verge) that Dell's execs were refreshingly frank on the topic of AI and the PC in a Q&A session that was part of the company's pre-briefing for CES 2026 this week.
First up, Dell's COO, Jeff Clarke, observed that there was an "expectation of AI driving end user demand" but also an "un-met promise of AI", hinting at some of the disappointment - or confusion - around AI PCs for the average consumer.
Then Dell's head of product, Kevin Terwilliger, went further and noted of the company's fresh product launches (which included the new XPS 14 and 16 laptops): "One thing you'll notice is the message we delivered around our products was not AI-first. So, a bit of a shift from a year ago where we were all about the AI PC."
Terwilliger continued: "We're very focused on delivering upon the AI capabilities of a device - in fact everything that we're announcing has an NPU in it - but what we've learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is they're not buying based on AI. In fact I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome."
In short, Dell is taking its foot off the pedal when it comes to pushing AI in its marketing, simply because it doesn't believe that consumers are that interested - and that it might even be a point of confusion for some.
While you could argue that the latter viewpoint is somewhat patronizing, I think it's a fair enough observation overall. I believe some consumers really don't care about AI, and do not see the benefit of the various abilities for Copilot+ PCs - those exclusive Windows 11 AI features - or how they might use them.
And in truth, there isn't that much to get excited about with these AI features to date, anyway - not beyond image-editing tricks (and let's face it, many folks don't do anything much with their photos) and additional search powers (some of which people may be very suspicious of on the privacy front, particularly the key AI piece of the puzzle here, which is Recall).
Many people probably don't use AI beyond queries posed to ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini or whatever their favorite flavor of AI portal happens to be, using them as a kind of beefed-up Google search (other engines are available, etcetera).
Furthermore, with all the heat that Microsoft is taking over trying to crowbar more AI into Windows 11 - despite consistent cries from detractors who'd rather the software giant fixes what's wrong with its desktop OS, rather than putting in new features that 'no one asked for' at a rate of knots - the reputation of AI features is being tarnished considerably in terms of questioning Microsoft's motives here.
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