Are you bored of reading about AI yet? It’s difficult to get through any news cycle without being subjected to the latest developments or global disruptions that this technological shift has caused. We’re not immune to it at Creative Bloq either. The creative industries are being so significantly disrupted that we just have to talk about it.
Even this week Ian Dean sat down with Nikola Todorovic, the co-founder of Flow Studio, the AI filmmaking company partnered with Autodesk. In that interview, Todorovic declared that "we can cut production costs by 95%" and that “AI can fix a broken film industry." These are bold claims that can often leave ordinary creatives wondering what that means for them.
It seems like the laptop industry is also forcing us down a path that we wouldn’t necessarily have chosen. I’ve grown tired of the number of laptops that I’ve now reviewed that have the letters ‘AI’ tagged on the end of their name. Even if you just wanted an ordinary high-performing laptop, you’ll probably be forced into buying a device that is marketed towards AI workflows.
That said, we’re probably in danger of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Just because the term "AI" is seriously overused in the laptop industry doesn't mean that all AI laptops are inherently bad or worse, evil. It just means that we, as those reviewing them, have to work harder at identifying the wheat from the chaff.
I recently had the fun task of throwing “every creative AI tool that I could think of at the Acer Nitro V 16 AI” just to see what happened. I expected, like most other AI laptops, just to fall over and beg mercy at the hands of me, the creative purist overlord. But that isn’t what happened.
In fact, the laptop bossed through tasks in ComfyUI, background generative AI in Photoshop, and AI video effects with NVIDIA Broadcast. “These applications were quick, responsive, and wholly reliable.” I was left wondering if I had thus far been too harsh on laptop manufacturers.
I still stand by my belief that AI-branded laptops are seriously overhyped, but I now appreciate, more than ever, that there might be a place for them in the creative industry. I just wish the people who named laptops at these big manufacturers would only use AI in the name when it genuinely warrants it.
Just please don’t create a second category called ‘AI Pro’ laptops. If that happens, I think the hope of a creative world that isn’t dominated by AI might vanish.
If you like the idea of getting one, see our guide to the best AI laptops.
