Lenovo is building an AI assistant that ‘can act on your behalf’

While most of the attention in the AI ​​race is focused on model builders and cloud platforms, Lenovo is closer to millions of users than most companies. As the world The best PC maker by volumeLenovo ships tens of millions of devices every year. What you decide to ship, assemble, and integrate can directly shape how AI appears in many everyday lives.

That’s what made Lenovo’s announcement today at CES notable. At a flashy event Tuesday at The Sphere in Las Vegas, it introduced Qira, a system-level, cross-device AI assistant designed to live across Lenovo laptops and Motorola phones. It’s Lenovo’s most ambitious AI effort to date and a rare look at how a hardware giant with global reach is thinking about integrating AI more deeply.

Jeff Snow, head of AI products at Lenovo, tells me how Qira came together, why the company is intentionally avoiding one exclusive AI partnership, and what he’s learned from past experiences like… Moto Artificial Intelligence and Microsoft recall disaster.

Qira emerged from a quiet but meaningful internal reorganization less than a year ago, according to Snow. Lenovo has pulled its AI teams from individual hardware units like PCs, tablets and phones and centralized them into a new software-focused group that works across the entire company.

For a company that has long been optimized around hardware SKUs and supply chains, the move signaled a shift toward putting AI front and center. “We wanted to have built-in, cross-device intelligence that works with you all day long, learns from your interactions, and can act on your behalf,” Snow said. He mentioned using Qira’s on-device form during his trip to CES to help him with a workshop on how to talk about news in meetings based on notes and documents on his computer.

Qira isn’t built around a single leading AI model. Instead, it’s modular. Under the hood, it blends local on-device models with cloud-based models, grounded on Microsoft and OpenAI infrastructure accessible through Azure. A Stability AI deployment model has also been integrated, along with links to specific app partners like Notion and Perplexity.

“We didn’t want to tie ourselves to one model,” Snow said. “This space is moving very quickly. Different missions need different trade-offs around performance, quality and cost.”

This position flies in the face of pressure from major AI labs, many of which would gladly become the exclusive intelligence layer of a company with a Lenovo reach. Lenovo’s view is that optionality is more important, especially given its control of one of the world’s largest consumer computing distribution channels.

Snow previously worked on Moto AI, Motorola’s assistant, which he said saw high initial engagement. More than half of Motorola users tried it, but device retention wasn’t good. He said a lot of the experience feels like quick chat features that people can already get elsewhere.

“It moved us away from competing with chatbots,” Snow said. “Qira is about the things chatbots can’t do, like continuity, context, and working directly on your device.”

Lenovo has also paid close attention to the backlash around Microsoft’s recall feature. Qira was designed from the beginning with optional memory, persistent indicators and clear user controls, Snow said. Understanding context is optional. The recording is visible. Nothing is collected silently.

Cost pressures hang over all of this. Memory prices are on the rise as demand for artificial intelligence puts pressure on supply chains, and analysts expect PC prices to follow. Snow said Qira doesn’t raise basic system requirements for PCs, but it works better on high-end devices that have more RAM. Lenovo reduces local models to smaller memory footprints, such as 16GB of RAM, without diminishing the experience.

Strategically, Lenovo sees Qira as a means of retention and a hedge against commoditization of devices. In the short term, it hopes tighter integration between laptops and phones will prompt customers to stay within Lenovo’s ecosystem. In the long term, Snow frames Qira as a way to differentiate Lenovo devices when specs alone are no longer enough.