The year 2024 has reshuffled the cards in the global tech sector. Between the formal adoption of the world’s first global regulation on artificial intelligence, the arrival of processors featuring dedicated neural processing units in consumer PCs, and advancements in OLED screens, the tech landscape has undergone shifts whose effects extend well beyond the usual media cycle.
European AI Act: What the regulation changes for tech companies
In March 2024, the European Union formally adopted the AI Act, the world’s first global AI regulation. The timeline for implementation is staggered: certain AI systems deemed unacceptable (social scoring, subliminal manipulation) will be banned starting in 2025, while enhanced transparency and risk assessment obligations for high-risk systems will follow in the subsequent months.
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This text is already reshaping the product roadmaps of major tech players, both European and American. Companies deploying generative AI in recruitment, healthcare, or financial services must now plan for compliance audits and document the training datasets used.
In the United States, the regulatory dynamic is taking a different path. Several states, including California and New York, have launched in 2024 texts targeting AI in recruitment, advertising, and biometric data protection. These initiatives require companies to deploy audit and traceability systems for models, an operational constraint that many general tech landscapes overlook. Among the updates on the Info Tech site, several analyses detail these regulatory developments over time.
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PCs with NPU and embedded AI: the hardware breakthrough of CES 2024
The CES in Las Vegas served as a launchpad for a new category of computers. Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm each showcased processors integrating NPU (neural processing units) dedicated to AI. The promise: to run generative AI functions (meeting summaries, voice transcription, image editing) locally without relying on a remote cloud server.
This hardware shift marks a paradigm change. Until now, consumer generative AI has relied almost exclusively on online services. With AI PCs, part of the processing is done directly on the user’s machine, reducing latency and raising data privacy questions from a new angle.
Concrete limits of on-device AI
Field feedback varies on this point: the power of embedded NPUs remains significantly lower than that of datacenter GPUs. Models executable locally are lighter, thus less effective on complex tasks. Battery life remains a concern, as NPUs consume a notable portion of available energy during intensive processing.
- Transcription and automatic summarization functions work smoothly for short meetings, but quality degrades during long or multilingual sessions.
- AI-assisted image editing offers acceptable results for simple adjustments (background removal, sharpness enhancement), but does not compete with specialized cloud tools.
- Software compatibility varies by manufacturer: applications optimized for Intel NPUs are not necessarily optimized for those from Qualcomm, fragmenting the ecosystem.
OLED screens and Samsung innovations: what has changed in display technology
Samsung has confirmed its strategy around OLED technology for its high-end screens, with announcements covering both televisions and professional monitors. The overarching trend in 2024 concerns improving brightness and durability of panels, two historically weak points of OLED compared to LCD.
Prices remain a barrier to mass adoption. However, increased competition among manufacturers (Samsung, LG, Sony) is driving prices down in the mid-size television segment. For monitors aimed at creatives, OLED is gaining ground thanks to its color fidelity and native contrasts.
Mixed reality and spatial display
The other axis of innovation in display technology touches on mixed reality. Apple launched its Vision Pro headset in early 2024, while Meta continues to iterate on its Quest lineup. Industrial interest in immersive experiences remains strong, even if consumer sales volumes have not yet reached the thresholds hoped for by manufacturers.
Professional applications (training, 3D design, remote maintenance) represent the segment where mixed reality finds its immediate economic relevance. The available data do not allow for conclusions about the timeline for massive adoption by the general public.
Generative AI and intellectual property: the unresolved issue of 2024
The question of intellectual property related to AI-generated content has traversed the entire year 2024 without finding a stable answer. Several major lawsuits (media publishers against OpenAI, artists against Stability AI) are ongoing, and both American and European jurisdictions are proceeding on a case-by-case basis.
For companies, this legal uncertainty weighs on investment decisions. Using a generative model to produce marketing content, code, or visuals exposes one to a risk whose exact scope remains unclear. The legal departments of major tech groups have integrated this dimension into their processes, but SMEs and freelancers often navigate without a safety net.
- The legal status of a work generated by AI (whether protectable by copyright or not) varies by country and has not been subject to any international harmonization in 2024.
- The contractual clauses of model providers (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic) differ on liability in the case of unintentional infringement.
- Several sector initiatives (C2PA for content authentication, invisible watermarking) are attempting to provide technical answers, without binding force.
The tech sector in 2024 is characterized by an increasing gap between the speed of innovation and the ability of legal frameworks to keep up. The European AI regulation sets a first milestone, but questions of intellectual property, data sovereignty, and hardware fragmentation remain open. The decisions companies make in the coming months on these issues will determine the concrete form that the announced technological future will take.