Lenovo reveals a wrist phone and AI twins for everyone

AI and foldable phones are hot right now. Which is why Motorola and Lenovo’s annual showcase of forthcoming technology included a “Personal AI Twin” system, and a bendy smartphone that wraps around your wrist. We’re calling it Lenovo’s wrist phone.

The flexible wrist-worn Moto concept was shown off at Lenovo Tech World, the annual event for Motorola’s parent company. It folds from a 6.9in smartphone into an arch shape that sits on a table, then snaps onto a bracelet worn on a wrist. It’s more refined than a similar concept first seen at Tech World in 2016, although this new demonstration was far too short to get any real detail about the bendy concept.

Lenovo Personal AI Twin and Enterprise AI Twin

Held in Austin, Texas, Tech World 2023 took place under the tagline “AI for All”, which gives you a clue about the major theme.

Lenovo announced an artificial intelligence assistant that would come in two forms. One is the “Personal AI Twin” for individuals while the “Enterprise AI Twin” is for businesses.

This AI-powered assistant learns about you and your company from your devices, then suggests personalised information or anticipates your needs. Bound for Lenovo PCs and laptops at some point in the future, it will also appear on Motorola phones under the name MotoAI. 

According to Lenovo’s announcement, Enterprise AI Twin “finds and extracts relevant information within your enterprise, from devices, edge and private cloud, synthesizes them into assessments and conclusions, and proposes solutions… from helping employees book travel plans that comply with company policies and fit individual preferences, to supply chain teams mitigating risks based on public AI information such as weather patterns.”

Lenovo demonstrated the Personal AI Twin by asking for an itinerary of interesting things to do before a concert in Stockholm, Sweden. The publicly available AI in the demo suggested some generic sightseeing (the Abba museum and “a local café”), but the Lenovo Personal Twin suggested specific airlines, hotels near the concert venue and restaurants based on what cuisine you like. 

Lenovo and Nvidia focus on Hybrid AI

To keep personal and business data secure, Lenovo and its partner Nvidia focus on what they call “hybrid AI”. The idea is to create personalised responses from AI systems without giving your personal data to large language models (LLMs).

When you ask a question of your Personal Twin, the hybrid AI approach grabs information from AI systems, and then uses the data your phone or laptop holds about you to customise that response.

The personalisation happens on your device — according to the demo, it can even work without an internet connection. 

Outside of AI, Lenovo again demonstrated its forthcoming glasses-free 3D monitor, the ThinkVision 27 3D. This 4K monitor uses eye tracking and a lenticular lens to make images and video appear three-dimensional.

Read more about it from our coverage of four Lenovo highlights at IFA 2023.