- Dell hosted a Q&A as part of its pre-briefing for CES 2026
- One executive said of the company’s laptops that “from a consumer perspective … they’re not buying based on AI”
- This admission comes just as another Windows 11 AI flaw goes viral, which is unfortunate timing for Microsoft
Dell tells it as far as the modern world of PCs goes, with the computer maker bluntly explaining that consumers aren’t buying laptops based on AI capabilities.
PC Gamer reports (as flagged by The Verge ) that Dell executives were refreshingly candid about 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 of all, Dell COO Jeff Clarke observed that there was an “expectation of AI driving end-user demand” but also an “unfulfilled promise of AI”, suggesting some of the disappointment – or confusion – around AI PCs for the average consumer.
Then Dell product manager Kevin Terwilliger went on to note the company’s fresh product launches (which included the new XPS 14 and 16 laptops): “One thing you’ll notice is that the message we delivered around our products was not AI-first. So a bit of a shift from a year ago when we were all about the AI PC.”
Terwilliger continued, “We’re very focused on delivering a device’s AI capability—in fact, everything we advertise has an NPU in it—but what we’ve learned over the course of this year, especially from a consumer perspective, is that they’re not buying based on AI. In fact, I think AI probably confuses them more than it helps them understand a specific outcome.”
Analysis: it could be make or break for AI in Windows 11 this year
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 consumers are that interested – and that it might even be a point of confusion for some.
While you could argue that the latter point of view is somewhat condescending, I think it’s a fair enough observation overall. I think some consumers really don’t care about AI and don’t see the benefits of the various capabilities of Copilot+ PCs – the exclusive Windows 11 AI features – or how they can use them.
And in truth, there’s not much to get excited about with these AI features to date anyway – not beyond photo editing tricks (and let’s face it, a lot of people don’t do much with their photos) and additional search powers (of which some people may be very suspicious about privacy, especially the most important AI piece of the puzzle here).
Many people probably don’t use AI beyond queries made to ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, or whatever their favorite variant of AI portal happens to be, using them as a kind of augmented Google search (other machines are available, etc.).
Furthermore, with all the heat that Microsoft is taking and trying to put more AI into Windows 11 – despite consistent cries from critics who would rather the software giant fix what’s wrong with its desktop operating system than push new features that ‘nobody asked for’ at a breakneck speed – the reputation of the AI features is tarnished significantly in terms of questioning Microsoft’s motives here.
Is all this to show, ride the AI hype train and push as hard as possible with such features in Windows 11 in an attempt to impress additional shareholders and boost the market value?
Spectators of the kind of online bunfights that have taken place between anti-AI rebels and Microsoft executives are no doubt absorbing messages that, let’s say, don’t leave these AI features in the best light.
Especially not when you get videos like the one below on X, recently posted by Ryan Fleury (hat tip to Futurism for spotting this), which highlights an embarrassing flaw of the AI agent in Windows 11’s Settings app.
That clip has currently racked up well over four million views (at the time of writing), and as you can see, it shows the AI freezing and not giving any answer to a basic query. Not only any basic query, mind, but the very one that Windows 11 suggested the user try to demonstrate the agent’s capabilities – so you’d expect it to work well given that fact.
Okay, so this is a single example, but we’ve seen others. I can’t help but remember (pun fully intended) the video from Microsoft’s marketing department where the Copilot AI assistant makes a mess trying to help a user change the text size in Windows 11. (That clip was eventually pulled and I’m not sure how it got published in the first place). It’s an eye-opening case of AD – artificial dumbness – a term I coined two minutes ago (one that, unsurprisingly, already exists, Google – or should I say Gemini, which provides the ‘AI overview’ – tells me).
With the sentiment denigrating AI in Windows 11 to a greater extent lately, is it any wonder that Dell wants to distance itself from the concept of AI PCs? At least for now, especially as we move into a tough sales environment for laptops and desktops (with the high cost of RAM, storage and also GPUs in some cases).
And yes, Dell can remind us that despite its comments here, it’s still pushing AI in a way that “everything we advertise has an NPU in it” – but it’s not like there’s a choice in that regard, is it? Apart from budget laptops, all the cutting-edge PC chips to power modern laptops now have powerful NPUs, whether AMD, Intel or Qualcomm.
In fairness, the agentic AI functionality that Microsoft is now implementing with Windows 11 may be the piece of the puzzle that finally moves the needle on AI and captures the attention of consumers more broadly – but that remains to be seen. So do the potential security traps or other nastiness that AI agents can bring in tow.
And since one of the biggest problems with AI is a lack of trust in these features, whether from a security or privacy perspective – or just ‘hallucinations’ (AI going completely wrong) – AI agents could possibly be the ‘break’ rather than the ‘make’ of Copilot and all its associated attributes in Windows 11.
2026 will be a very telling year for AI, I think, but for now credit goes to Dell for being honest about the current state of AI capabilities in Windows 11 PCs. Although it is arguably the only sensible route to take with marketing PCs right now, given the circumstances as discussed above.
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