Intel rolls out AI customer support with Ask Intel, but warns answers may be inaccurate

Oh no, Intel is moving customer support to AI

The AI system warns users its answers may be inaccurate, raising concerns about potential hardware damage from incorrect technical advice. If your Intel processor requires a warranty return or support, the first "person" you'll probably be dealing with at Intel will be an AI. Intel is rolling out "Ask Intel," an addition to its Intel support site, that runs on Microsoft Copilot rather than on human intervention. Ask Intel will appear as part of support.intel.com, Intel sales executive Boji Tony announced on a LinkedIn post last week. Tony is the vice president and general manager of Intel sales enablement and support. Ask Intel is built on Microsoft Copilot Studio, and is "a new generative AI-powered virtual assistant for customer and partner support -- one of the first of its kind in the semiconductor industry," Tony said in the post, as reported by CRN. "With agentic AI capabilities, Ask Intel can open support cases on your behalf, check warranty coverage instantly, and connect you with live support agents when human support is needed," Tony said. That Intel should replace at least some of its human customer support staff with AI shouldn't be surprising. For one thing, Intel and others have been pushing AI solutions to replace humans at drive-through fast-food restaurants for years, such as at KFC. Now, the chipmaker is applying that same strategy to addressing your support questions, too. CRN reported that Intel began removing inbound customer support phone numbers in December, redirecting them to the support site. Naturally, Intel plans to make Ask Intel more central to the support experience over time. Today, Ask Intel isn't the first thing you see when you visit Intel's support site. When I began digging down through support options for Intel's NUCs and Intel's processors, the first time I experienced Ask Intel was in the "Live Chat" portion of the site. "This Virtual Assistant uses generative AI and answers may be inaccurate," Ask Intel says. It also notes, "By using this feature, you agree that Intel and its third-party service provider may record, use, and store the contents of this dialog in accordance with Intel's Privacy Notice." When I used Ask Intel and asked to speak to a live representative, it first deflected, prompting me to describe the issue. In this case, I asked about crashing desktop CPUs, and Ask Intel first instructed me to download an updated graphics driver. I'm not entirely certain that would have solved my problem. It also suggested that I stress-test my processor, which may have exacerbated the issue. When I asked if stress-testing a possibly defective CPU was a good idea, Ask Intel then recommended that I update my motherboard's BIOS instead. To be fair, we're seeing AI chat options appear more and more in customer service. I'd be irritated if an AI screwed up my burger, but I'm sure a human manager could quickly fix it. But if I get the wrong advice from an AI and end up torching an expensive CPU, it might be a different story. Proceed carefully.

Intel's Fix for PC Problems Is... "Agentic AI"; a Microsoft Copilot Bot That Promises Solutions While You Cross Your Fingers

Intel has rolled out its virtual assistant on Microsoft's Copilot Studio platform, aiming to solve user queries about hardware problems and, hopefully, find solutions. Intel's efforts for consumers have been really interesting over the past few months, given that the company saw massive success with its Panther Lake launch, which suggests that, at least on the launch front, Team Blue is doing great. However, in terms of after-sales services and customer support, Intel has lagged on several occasions, and we saw significant flaws in how the company handled the Raptor Lake instability issues. Apparently, Intel plans to handle customer service queries through its "Ask Intel" program, an AI-powered assistant that uses agentic properties to address customer inquiries. According to Intel's Boji Tony, the idea is to provide a solution that lets customers spend less time addressing hardware problems and lets the AI handle everything. According to Tony, here are the primary responsibilities of the 'Ask Intel' assistant: The human-in-the-loop property isn't entirely ruled out with this assistant, but the idea is to eliminate the need for humans to address redundant queries and instead assign them to tasks that actually matter to customers. And we did decide to test the virtual assistant ourselves to see how it responds to complex queries. We asked it to find a solution to CPU instability issues, and it provided multiple answers, including a BIOS update, running a CPU stress test (interesting), and checking for thermal issues, even though we specified that our processor is heating up. It appears that the agent itself is entirely dependent on Intel's internal customer support system, which means that, for a given query, it sees what Intel has pushed based on official documents and then reiterates it. When a customer has something the agent cannot figure out, it connects to a human representative, which is a fair enough fallback mechanism. However, Ask Intel is limited to a certain number of problems, and you cannot entirely depend on the service alone to have your system issues sorted out. Customer support is a major area where AI use cases are currently being explored, and in the case of Intel, well, the company did decide to jump on the bandwagon. Given Intel's past after-sales service, we hope 'Ask Intel' can address the underlying problems.