March 4 (Reuters) - Apple ( AAPL ) on Monday unveiled apair of new MacBook Air laptops with its latest M3 processors,betting that the more powerful models would attract consumerslooking to upgrade to artificial intelligence-powered personalcomputers.

The new MacBook Air models come with 13-inch and 15-inchscreen sizes and are up to 60% faster than the model withApple's ( AAPL ) M1 processor, the company said on its website.

Prices for the smaller model start at $1,099 in the UnitedStates, while the base version of the bigger MacBook Air costs$1,299.

Both are available for order from Monday, with deliveriesset to begin later this week, said Apple ( AAPL ), which has since 2020used its own chip after parting ways with Intel ( INTC ).

The introduction of AI-enabled PCs is expected to help drivea recovery in the PC market in 2024 after a more than two-year,post-pandemic slump.

Its Mac sales were up slightly at $7.78 billion in the lastreported quarter after slumping by a third in the previousquarter.