Lenovo is launching AI Now. That’s an AI assistant for the latest Lenovo laptops that brings ChatGPT-like capabilities to your device. The assistant runs locally and gets its knowledge from your documents, among other things.
At Lenovo Tech World in Bellevue, Lenovo is showcasing its own AI assistant, Lenovo AI Now. AI Now is built on Meta’s Llama 3.1 model and runs locally on compatible laptops. AI Now’s default interface does not surprise. We see a chatbot in a Lenovo window very reminiscent of Microsoft Copilot.
Local data as the basis
Still, a comparison with Chat with Nvidia’s RTX more appropriate. After all, AI Now gets its knowledge from local data, just like that solution. You can add folders and files from your internal drive to Lenovo AI Now’s knowledge at will. If you ask a question, the chatbot will try to answer it based on your documents.
At the event, we see a demo in which Lenovo AI Now has access to a detailed trip planning document. When someone asks a question about to planned trip during a demo, AI Now is smart enough to use that document as a reference and answer the question correctly.
“Local inference with models built for endpoints, that’s an important step toward truly personal AI,” CEO Yuanqing Yang said on stage. Lenovo’s ambition is to develop very personal AI solutions, and AI Now is a milestone in that.
Learning and creating
Lenovo AI Now is not the fastest chatbot when running on local hardware, but replies appear relatively smoothly. AI Now further serves as a hub to direct users to some other AI applications. For example, Lenovo is demonstrating the Learning Zone, aimed at students. There, for example, you can upload a course in the form of a PDF, after which AI automatically generates a multiple-choice test you can use to study. The Creator Zone, in turn, allows you to generate images
Because AI Now runs locally, your data does not go to the cloud. That does imply that you must have a compatible device. Computers need 24 GB of RAM to be compatible, unless they are equipped with a dedicated GPU. In that case, 16 GB is sufficient. AI Now dynamically uses CPU, GPU and NPU when they are present.
Tinkering with the settings
Lenovo points out other functionality: AI Now can help you adjust your laptop’s settings. For example, you can complain about sore eyes, after which the AI assistant suggests activating Eye Care mode. Still, we see that more as a gimmick ourselves: it’s not that hard to adjust settings by yourself.
AI Now’s local processing of data does show promise. Those who take a lot of notes, have folders full of presentations or keep important data in PDFs can unlock them with Lenovo AI Now without entrusting them to a cloud partner. Moreover, AI Now is free with compatible Lenovo laptops.
Unfortunately, the AI assistant will not be available in Dutch at launch. Other languages besides English should follow soon, though.
Copilot and AI Companion
Moreover, Lenovo is not alone in seeing a local AI assistant as the laptop builder’s responsibility. HP is working on a similar feature under the name HP AI Companion.
Finally, we note that such functionality does fall heavily in line with Microsoft’s Copilot solution, though Lenovo disputes that during the demo. The company calls AI Now complementary, although it is not so clear to us in what scenario you would use both solutions side by side.
Microsoft has tighter integration with documents through Microsoft 365 and Copilot, but that service is cloud-based and costs money. AI Now can work with your local documents at no additional cost, and seems more accessible to us in that regard.