Lenovo introduces AI Now. This is an AI assistant for the latest Lenovo laptops that brings ChatGPT-like functionality to your device. The assistant runs on site and draws its knowledge from your documents, among other things.

At Lenovo Tech World in Bellevue, Lenovo is showing its own AI assistant: Lenovo AI Now. AI Now is based on Meta’s Llama 3.1 model and runs locally on compatible laptops. AI Now’s standard interface is not surprising. We see a chatbot in a Lenovo window that is very reminiscent of Microsoft Copilot.

Local data as a basis

Another comparison with Chat with Nvidia’s RTX more appropriate. After all, AI Now gets its knowledge from local data, just like this solution. You can add folders and files from your internal drive to Lenovo AI Now knowledge as you wish. When you ask a question, the chatbot tries to answer it based on your documents.

At the event we will see a demo where Lenovo AI Now has access to detailed trip planning. If someone asks a question about a planned trip during a demo, AI Now is smart enough to use this document as a reference and answer the question correctly.

“Local inference with models built for endpoints is an important step toward truly personal AI,” CEO Yuanqing Yang said on stage. Lenovo has the ambition to develop highly personal AI solutions and AI Now is a milestone in this.

Learn and create

Lenovo AI Now isn’t the fastest chatbot when running on local hardware, but responses are relatively quick. AI Now also serves as a hub to point users to some other AI applications. This is how Lenovo demonstrates it Learning zoneis aimed at students. For example, you can upload a course there in the form of a PDF, and the AI ​​will automatically generate a multiple-choice test that you can use to learn. The Creator Zone You can then create images

Because AI Now runs locally, your data doesn’t migrate to the cloud. This means you must have a compatible device. For compatibility, computers require 24GB of RAM unless equipped with a dedicated GPU. In this case, 16 GB is enough. AI Now uses CPU, GPU and NPU dynamically when available.

Tinker with the settings

Lenovo points out other features: AI Now can help you customize your laptop’s settings. For example, you may complain about sore eyes and the AI ​​assistant will suggest… Eye careMode to activate. We see it as more of a gimmick: it’s not that difficult to make the settings yourself.

The local processing of data by AI Now is promising. Anyone who takes a lot of notes, has folders full of presentations, or saves important data in PDFs can use Lenovo AI Now to access it without trusting it to a cloud partner. Additionally, AI Now is free on compatible Lenovo laptops.

Unfortunately, the AI ​​assistant is not available in Dutch at launch. Other languages ​​besides English are expected to follow soon.

Copilot and AI companion

In addition, Lenovo is not the only one that sees a local AI assistant as the responsibility of the laptop manufacturer. HP is working on a similar feature called HP AI Companion.

Finally, we note that this functionality is heavily influenced by Microsoft’s Copilot solution, although Lenovo denies this during the demo. The company describes AI Now as complementary, although it is not clear to us in which scenario both solutions would be used side by side.

Microsoft offers 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 to us to be more accessible in this regard.