Lenovo floods CES 2024 with business tech including an AI assistant that can attend meetings for you

Lenovo introduced nine business PCs and laptops at CES 2024, and demoed its AI Now Personal Assistant ahead of its likely rollout later this year. Although some of AI Now’s features replicate Windows Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot, it has the big advantage of being free to Lenovo laptop owners.

But perhaps Lenovo AI Now’s most useful feature for remote workers, forced to attend long meetings, is that it can make them appear as if they’re attending a meeting when they’ve nipped off to answer a call.

The idea will be familiar to anyone who’s watched Speed. Except that here, the AI tool captures an image of you attending a meeting, then replays it on loop.

Head to the end of the video and you’ll see this in action, but we’ll hold our hands up: we didn’t capture the magic moment terribly well.

Lenovo AI PCs arrive by the dozen

In addition to the AI Now Personal Assistant, Lenovo announced a staggering number of laptops and PCs that include Intel’s new Core Ultra chips. By my count, 33 in total, ranging from mini business PCs to brutish gaming laptops.

In terms of business laptops, that includes the 12th generation of Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 Carbon. This will be available from March 2024 in the US. Lenovo has also updated the ThinkPad X1 2-in-1, now at Gen 9, which will be available at the same time.

Lenovo continues to experiment with its ThinkBook range. The most interesting release (look out for my first-look review tomorrow) is the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 5 Hybrid. Available Q2 2024, it’s noteworthy because its screen detaches to become an Android tablet. Yes, you read that right.

You can now read our hands-on review of the Lenovo ThinkBook Plus gen 5 Hybrid.

We’re also fans of the super-slim Lenovo ThinkBook 13x Gen 4, which will go on sale in Q1 2024 with prices from $1,399. It’s Lenovo’s first carbon-neutral laptop aimed at SMBs, and features a Windows Copilot key. Well, it will: the sample we saw was pre-production and didn’t feature it.

Related reading: CES 2024: Business tech trends

Summary of Lenovo CES 2024 business releases