• Gigabyte showed off a range of “AI Gaming” notebooks at CES 2024 this week.
• The notebooks are named as such because they could be used for AI development but aside from the hardware and some “AI” powered features, they are just gaming notebooks.
• These latest models sport Nvidia RTX 40 series GPUs and Intel Core processors along with some “AI-powered features” that improve battery life and performance, which many notebooks have.

Well, we’ve arrived folks. We’ve reached the point where everybody and their dog is slapping artificial intelligence onto a product name in the hope that it will drive sales.

While much of the “AI” that is referenced in articles and blogs these days is just a moniker for “large language models”, that hasn’t stopped Silicon Valley from pushing the technology into every digital solution it can.

This was put into sharp relief this week during CES 2024 where AI was the focus of many products, no matter how little sense it makes. Does one need a pager with AI? Not really but, by George, will tech firms sell you that device as if it’s an oven that every home needs.

However, we now need to turn our attention to Gigabyte which announced “AI gaming laptops” at CES 2024 this week. What is an AI gaming notebook? That’s a damned good question because we’re not entirely sure.

“The GIGABYTE AI Gaming Laptops offer a staggering 20-fold increase in AI productivity, extended battery life, and durability. The introduction of GIGABYTE’s exclusive AI NEXUS technology and a dedicated Copilot hotkey for quick access to Microsoft Copilot in Windows, provide users with a complete on-device generative AI experience,” Gigabyte wrote in a press release.

From what we can tell, depending on what AI is being created, AI development requires a beefy CPU, GPU and RAM which, coincidentally, gaming notebooks often house. In this instance, Gigabyte says its AI gaming notebooks are simply packing the latest Nvidia RTX 40 GPUs (though not the SUPER variants announced this week) and Intel Core Ultra processor.

Essentially Gigabyte has slapped AI onto these notebooks because a user can, if they chose to, use the notebook for AI development. We point this out because despite gaming notebooks being great for editing video or data analysis, we’ve yet to see a Premier Pro Gaming Notebook or a Data Analysis Gaming Notebook because that would just be silly.

There are some AI features packed into these Gigabyte notebooks but they aren’t anything new.

“The GIGABYTE exclusive AI NEXUS technology elevates performance and productivity. AI Power Gear intelligently extends battery life by detecting input power. AI Boost improves performance automatically based on the user’s specific scenario. AI Generator provides on-device generative AI utilities for a quick startup,” the manufacturer writes.

Unfortunately, this AI NEXUS only seems to ship with high-end Aorus notebooks which is a bit of a letdown.

Incredibly, our ageing Acer Predator is also able to extend battery life when it detects it’s running on battery power, we also have intelligent fans that ramp up when components get too warm.

When you look at what Gigabyte is saying, there is very little here that makes these notebooks primed for AI. The Intel Core Ultra processors do have a neural engine but that’s just Gigabyte selecting an existing product with an NPU rather than its own solution.

These AI notebooks are, to put it plainly, just gaming notebooks that could be used to develop AI solutions and one could probably accomplish the same thing with a notebook of the same spec that doesn’t have AI emblazoned on the box.

It all just feels a bit like a manufacturer’s marketing team trying to make a product relevant by slapping AI on the label because that’s one of the ways it can be used. If that’s how we’re doing product development we look forward to the Kitchen Tablet with the ability to read recipes while you cook or the Navigator edition iPhone that ships with Maps.

Are we making it clear just how ludicrous it is to highlight one use case in marketing for a product? We hope we have.

Putting the bizarre marketing jargon aside if you are in the market for a new notebook and you’re a Gigabyte fan, you can head here to read more about these Gigabyte’s notebooks.