The past two years have seen a rebranding of Windows PCs as AI PCs or Copilot+ PCs because Microsoft believes artificial intelligence (AI) is the future. Every new PC comes with a dedicated button for CoPilot, with devices having to have a chip with an NPU to use it. But at CES 2026, Dell made a bold admission that consumers don't really care about AI features on PCs, according to a report by PCGamer.
Dell's head of product, Kevin Terwilliger, was quoted as saying "what we've learned over the years, especially from a consumer perspective, is that they don't buy based on AI features," he added, "in fact, I think AI might be more confusing to them." This year when launching products at CES, Dell did not emphasize AI, but rather focused on design, the rebranding of the XPS brand and longer battery life.
The fact is that AI features, although attractive, are not used all the time by a large number of consumers. The addition of AI features in various applications is seen as unnecessary and in increasing subscription costs, which angers consumers.
