Intel is trying to automate its way out of its customer support embarrassment with AI.
Troubled Chipzilla has rolled out a virtual assistant on Microsoft’s Copilot Studio platform, aiming to deal with user queries about hardware problems and push fixes before anyone has to talk to a human.
Chipzilla’s consumer push has been lively in recent months, helped by the success of its Panther Lake launch, but after-sales support has been patchy, and the Raptor Lake instability mess did it no favours.
Now it wants to funnel customer service through an “Ask Intel” programme, an AI assistant with agentic behaviour that is meant to handle the repetitive stuff and hand the awkward cases to people.
Intel’s Boji Tony said: “The idea is to provide a solution that lets customers spend less time addressing hardware problems and lets the AI handle everything.”
The assistant can open support cases, check warranty coverage and route you to live agents when needed, which is basically a bot doing triage so humans do not have to read the same panicked CPU messages all day.
The human-in-the-loop bit is still there, but the point is to dump the redundant queries on the assistant and keep staff for situations where the scripts fall apart.
When tested on CPU instability, the assistant suggested a BIOS update, running a CPU stress test and checking thermal issues, even after being told the processor was heating up.
It leans heavily on Chipzilla’s internal support system, meaning it mostly repeats what Intel has already published in official documents.
If it cannot work something out, it kicks you to a human rep, which is a sensible backstop, but the assistant is limited to a set list of problems and will not magically sort every broken rig.
