It’s no secret that AI technology is changing the way we work and do business, but how can it help your business? In the same way that computers and software like Excel and email transformed business decades ago, AI is dramatically changing the landscape of employee productivity and core business functions. At the center of all of this is the AI PC.
The AI PC is indeed a marketing buzzword, but it’s also an essential piece of business technology. Whether you are a C-suite decision-maker or an entry-level employee, this is real technology with applications far beyond enthusiasts seeking boosts in the classic kinds of performance. Enterprise AI PC features can dramatically improve day-to-day efficiency and business operations across the board, but only if you’re aware of the latest features and capabilities.
Here at PCMag, we keep track of the latest features introduced by companies like Microsoft and Google, as well as the many AI-powered systems on the market today. So here are a few of the most useful AI PC features that can help your business right away.
First, Let’s Imagine an AI-Enhanced Workday
Before jumping into specific features, let’s imagine a day in the life of an employee or a team enhanced by AI. A project manager needs to coordinate with a global team of experts, with video calls that span time zones, borders, and languages. Thanks to live captioning and real-time translation, everyone can communicate easily. AI-enhanced video makes the webcam image look clean and professional. After the meeting, an AI sends a summarized transcript to every team member, with individual commitments identified, follow-up emails drafted, and even a proposal deck assembled from the meeting content.
Another team member putting together a report can easily find the files they need with a simple conversational search, rather than digging through email chains and file menus to find a particular figure or chart. Another puts together quality custom graphics for the presentation, based on their own quick sketches, and enhanced with AI—no Photoshop skills needed. A third synthesizes contract information and proprietary reports, all without any worries about keeping that information private or about whether the cloud service they usually use is secure, because the work is done locally on their own machine.
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At the end of the day, the project manager finds that all team members are delivering ahead of schedule, helping them not only meet their deadlines but also dazzle their clients. This team doesn’t have superpowers: They have AI PCs and know how to make the most of modern technology.
This scene may be hypothetical, and it is understandably vague, since no made-up example perfectly describes your business. But everything I described is real in the sense that these are features you can use today—capabilities that can speed up your processes, improve productivity, and help your business do better from day to day.
You’ll find dozens of ways to use the many AI features offered in modern PCs, but here are nine of the ways I’d recommend businesses and employees get the most out of them today.
1. Find Information Naturally (Windows Recall)
You may not have a photographic memory, but Copilot+ PCs do, thanks to a feature known as Windows Recall. (“Copilot+ PC” is Microsoft’s specific term for AI PCs that run on Windows 11.) It uses your AI PC’s neural processing unit or NPU—an AI-dedicated portion of its processor—to create a personal semantic index of everything you see on your screen, from documents to websites to photos.
Unlike traditional search, which relies on specific file names or keywords, Recall makes finding information easy with natural-language searching. This term means you can search using casual descriptions like “the red and blue bar chart from the meeting last Wednesday.” Because it can reference information visually as well as search for specific keywords and file types, it can reduce the time spent searching for files and re-engaging with past work.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
This capability means a sales representative can find a particular client’s pitch deck from a month ago and recover their notes on pricing objections, letting them worry less about the scavenger hunt for old information and focus instead on the current negotiations. Or a project manager might ask, “What version of the app design did we approve in January?” to quickly pull up relevant emails, PDFs, or meeting notes without having to dig through extensive threads, jump from app to app, or remember whether they took notes in that particular meeting.
According to Microsoft-commissioned testing by Principled Technologies, Recall is up to 70% faster at finding and accessing information than standard Windows 10 search, reclaiming your time for more meaningful work.
2. Create Instant Contextual Actions (Click to Do)
Automation isn’t magic, but sometimes it feels that way. Click to Do eliminates app-switching friction on Copilot+ PCs with AI-powered contextual shortcut tools triggered by a simple shortcut (such as Windows key plus a mouse click), a touch-screen swipe, or an icon. It suggests next steps based on what it sees, without jumping back and forth between apps.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Customer service agents can read a support ticket and receive an inline suggestion to deactivate an account or escalate a concern based on the context of the customer’s request, enabling a one-click resolution. In finance and data management, a table of data on your screen—even one that’s not in a spreadsheet—can be turned into a visual table and a functional Excel file with just a click.
Meanwhile, an executive reading an email that mentions a meeting time might use Click to Do to automatically extract the meeting details and suggest creating a calendar event, all without leaving that conversation.
Designed for users who need to bridge the gap between static information and actionable tasks, Click to Do performs the action in place and can reduce workflow time by 55%, according to that same Principled Technologies research.
3. Hold Meetings With Real-Time Offline Translation (Live Captions)
Seamless multilingual translation has been a dream of science fiction for decades. Thanks to Live Captions powered by NPU hardware, converting live or recorded audio into real-time captions and translations can be done today, on your device.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Copilot+ PCs can do this locally, requiring no internet connection, and with high performance, thanks to that NPU silicon power. Supporting translation from over 40 languages, it works across any application and even video files on the device. It’s local, it’s secure, and it opens up real-time communication that breaks down language and accessibility barriers. Use a microphone connected to a PC, and it can even be used for in-person conversations.
Some examples of how it might be used? Technicians in remote regions can use this in the field to ensure clear communication during safety briefings or local training. Likewise, customer support center agents can assist foreign-language customers while maintaining strict data security and privacy. Or multinational teams can communicate during video calls with platforms like Teams or Zoom without worrying about insecure cloud services or subscription-based translation services.
4. Cultivate a Professional Video Presence (Windows Studio Effects)
Some of the best AI features run in the background, making you look more professional without lifting a finger. Windows Studio Effects is a suite of AI-enhanced video and audio tools. The NPU on a Copilot+ PC can handle these visual and audio enhancements without draining your laptop battery as much as using CPU or GPU power would, or slowing down your main processor while you work. Features include Portrait Light, Eye Contact (teleprompter effect), and Voice Focus (noise cancellation).
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
You’ll find many scenarios where Windows Studio Effects can provide a competitive edge, such as enabling an executive to maintain a consistent, commanding presence during high-stakes calls, even while reading complex data on a screen in a poorly lit home office.
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Sales engineers can stream distraction-free product demos, confident that features like Voice Focus ensure their voice carries over background noise and Automatic Framing keeps them centered as they move or gesture. Likewise, HR departments can use these tools to provide a standardized appearance for hiring panels and recruiting interviews, ensuring a high-quality, professional recording of the interview process. (Not to mention: These features can also help if you’re the interviewee.)
5. Use Privacy-First Data Synthesis (Local NPU Processing)
In industries like finance, legal, or healthcare, data security is more than a consideration—it’s the law. With an AI PC, you can uphold that privacy-first commitment while still leveraging AI tools that analyze, organize, and summarize complex information entirely on-device. The NPU makes this all possible, helped by built-in Microsoft Pluton security coprocessors to protect credentials and encryption keys at the silicon level.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Under this scheme, proprietary information never leaves your machine, so it never gets uploaded to a server or used to train someone’s AI model, and you avoid the compliance risks you’d get with ChatGPT or another external AI cloud tool.
Take healthcare clinicians. They can use AI to summarize long, complex patient histories while maintaining HIPAA compliance because analysis and synthesis occur locally. Sensitive medical records are never shared externally. Finance analysts, meanwhile, can run AI models to extract insights from proprietary financial statements and spreadsheets while maintaining data confidentiality and protecting market-sensitive research.
Product designers and engineers can use AI assistance while working with CAD data or design files, keeping their intellectual property from potential exposure in cloud-based AI environments.
6. Leverage Local Content Creation and Editing (Cocreator)
AI image generation helps you go from a blank page to a usable asset instantly, but cloud-based image generators can leave you with little control over the results, stick you with limited generation credits and per-image costs, or just leave you worried about data privacy as you try to make brand-sensitive content.
Recommended by Our Editors
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Cocreator is a real-time AI image generation tool built into Microsoft Paint on Copilot+ PCs. It uses diffusion-based algorithms to turn hand-drawn sketches and text prompts into professional assets, even if you’re not a professional designer or artist. By generating all images locally, it’s a secure, cost-effective solution for high-speed prototyping, letting you go from rough concept to finished product quickly.
Marketing departments can generate ad visuals at high speed, iterating on branded campaigns while ensuring content stays in-house. Or professors and training staff can create custom diagrams and illustrate materials on the fly, even without a stable internet connection.
Small creative studios can use Cocreator for storyboard generation, letting illustrators and video editors rapidly visualize scenes and refine creative ideas without the overhead of cloud-based tools, while still enjoying the speed of AI-enhanced creative work.
7. Streamline System Troubleshooting (SLM in Settings)
If you’re tired of navigating PC settings, searching online forums for answers to technical problems, or just don’t want to bother your IT guy quite so often, you’ll appreciate this next feature. Using Small Language Models (SLMs) that run on your device, Copilot+ PCs can provide a system-aware helper that takes the headache out of tweaking Windows settings.
(Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Because they can understand natural language and user intent, and provide direct, actionable solutions right on your machine, you can describe a problem without knowing the technical terms, get a one-click button to adjust a setting, and even navigate and control your settings hands-free by voice.
These kinds of features are especially helpful in small businesses that may not have a dedicated IT department, letting employees resolve PC performance issues independently, reducing downtime and cutting support costs. And for employees using laptops in remote field operations, the device can self-diagnose battery issues or connectivity problems using embedded AI models, even without an active internet connection.
8. Unify Your Knowledge Management (Researcher Agents)
Copilot+ PCs have introduced Researcher Agents as part of a limited preview within enterprise builds, providing a glimpse of how the native Windows agent infrastructure will allow AI on your system to orchestrate tasks across multiple files and applications simultaneously. Unlike a chatbot, these tools can work in the background, pulling context from local files, emails, chats, and browser tabs to synthesize information and bridge the gaps between siloed apps and workflows.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
A consulting firm can use Copilot to consolidate scattered notes from Outlook, Word, Excel, and Teams into a single, client-ready summary of a project, ensuring every important touchpoint is captured in one cohesive, professional document. Or market analysts can aggregate trends from PDF reports, active browser tabs, and local documents to compile decks of unified insights, drastically reducing the time spent retrieving and manually entering data.
Students and academic researchers can use a researcher agent to synthesize content from multiple documents and apps, combining it for literature reviews or organizing a semester’s worth of study material from disparate sources.
9. Extend Your Productivity on Battery (NPU)
Sometimes the most useful features aren’t about complex automations or intelligent assistants. As noted earlier, an NPU is a specialized piece of silicon, built into late-model CPUs from Intel and others, designed to handle AI tasks efficiently. According to data from Microsoft and Qualcomm, these units provide up to 100 times the power efficiency versus a traditional CPU for AI tasks. Thanks to this ability to offload AI work to the NPU, the whole package drastically reduces both the thermal load and power draw of AI-boosted day-to-day work.
Copilot+ PCs also feature NPU-based features that optimize system resources to improve overall battery life. As a result, NPU-equipped PCs enable record-breaking battery performance, stretching uptime farther than ever before and eliminating battery anxiety on high-performance machines.
Whether you’re an executive on the move, a professional on a long-haul flight, or a consultant in the field, you can rest easy knowing that your AI PC preserves the GPU and CPU resources needed for core work tasks, while letting the NPU handle AI-assisted work and autonomously handle powerful AI features without you having to reach for the charger.
About Our Expert
Brian Westover
Principal Writer, Hardware
Experience
From the laptops on your desk to satellites in space and AI that seems to be everywhere, I cover many topics at PCMag. I’ve covered PCs and technology products for over 15 years at PCMag and other publications, among them Tom’s Guide, Laptop Mag, and TWICE. As a hardware reviewer, I’ve handled dozens of MacBooks, 2-in-1 laptops, Chromebooks, and the latest AI PCs. As the resident Starlink expert, I’ve done years of hands-on testing with the satellite service. I also explore the most valuable ways to use the latest AI tools and features in our Try AI column.
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