Intel Says Dozens of PC Makers Are Using Its New AI-Enabled Chip

 A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
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Intel Says Dozens of PC Makers Are Using Its New AI-Enabled Chip

 A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)
A smartphone with a displayed Intel logo is placed on a computer motherboard in this illustration taken March 6, 2023. (Reuters)

Intel on Thursday said that dozens of personal computer makers are using its newest chip, as the company and its customers try to entice consumers to upgrade their machines for a new era of chatbots.

At a press event in New York, Intel said the new offering will be available in laptops from Dell Technologies, Microsoft, Lenovo Group and others that will go on sale on Thursday at Best Buy in the US and other global retailers including China's JD.com and Australia's Harvey Norman.

Intel shares rose as much as 3.6% after the news.

Intel's central processor units (CPUs) have long served as the brains of most personal computers. But the new chip that went by the code name "Meteor Lake" is Intel's first that will also contain what is called a neural processing unit (NPU), a section of the chip dedicated to handling artificial intelligence tasks.

Intel's pitch to consumers and businesses comes as it is fighting its way out of a post-pandemic PC slump where buyers who upgraded to work from home in 2020 have seen little reason to buy new equipment.

Intel Chief Executive Pat Gelsinger said during the event that Intel believes using its chips will make AI services cheaper, faster and more private than using services based in cloud data centers.

"That will be the star of the show in this coming year," Gelsinger said of AI on PCs. "You're unleashing this power for every person, every use case, every location in the future."

During a demonstration of the new chip in September, the company showed some examples of AI work that it hoped would spur interest, such as transcribing voice notes without having to send data to a third-party cloud provider or generating a song in the style of pop star Taylor Swift.

Intel on Thursday also showed what it said was the first working version of a chip called Gaudi 3, which it hopes will challenge Nvidia in the data center AI market.



WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
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WhatsApp to Start Showing Ads to Users in Some Parts of the Messaging App

A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)
A WhatsApp icon is displayed on an iPhone, Nov. 15, 2018, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (AP)

WhatsApp said Monday that users will start seeing ads in some parts of the app, as owner Meta Platforms moves to cultivate a new revenue stream by tapping the billions of people that use the messaging service.

Advertisements will be shown only in the app's Updates tab, which is used by as many as 1.5 billion people each day. However, they won't appear where personal chats are located, developers said.

"The personal messaging experience on WhatsApp isn’t changing, and personal messages, calls and statuses are end-to-end encrypted and cannot be used to show ads," WhatsApp said in a blog post.

It’s a big change for the company, whose founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton vowed to keep the platform free of ads when they created it in 2009.

Facebook purchased WhatsApp in 2014 and the pair left a few years later. Parent company Meta has long been trying to generate revenue from WhatsApp.

WhatsApp said ads will be targeted to users based on information like the user's age, the country or city where they're located, the language they're using, the channels they're following in the app, and how they're interacting with the ads they see.

WhatsApp said it won't use personal messages, calls and groups that a user is a member of to target ads to the user.

It's one of three advertising features that WhatsApp unveiled on Monday as it tries to monetize the app's user base. Channels will also be able to charge users a monthly fee for subscriptions so they can get exclusive updates. And business owners will be able to pay to promote their channel's visibility to new users.