Big UC News from Zoom, Microsoft, X and Apple

Zoom AI Companion Surpasses 500K Accounts Milestone and Launches Automatic Language Detection

Zoom has reported that its AI Companion productivity assistant has had over 500,000 accounts enabled within five months of launching.

In its Q4 FY 24 earnings call, Zoom underlined the early successes of its AI investments as being key drivers of its total revenue growth, rising 2.6 percent year over year for Q4.

Zoom also highlighted that AI Companion has already generated 7.2 million meeting summaries and outlined how its AI-first capabilities powered an impressive quarter (and year) for its Contact Centre business.

Kelly Steckelberg, CFO at Zoom, commented in the earnings call:

Zoom AI Companion has grown tremendously in just five months with over 510,000 accounts enabled and 7.2 million meeting summaries created as of the close of FY ’24. We are excited about the strong growth across these new products and the benefits they drive for our customers.”

This week, Zoom also announced that its AI Companion productivity assistant now automatically detects supported languages when producing meeting summaries.

To support multilingual teams in collaborating and communicating more dynamically across the Zoom platform, the new language capabilities for AI Companion also extend to nine languages for Team Chat and 36 languages (in preview) for in-meeting features.

• Read more about Zoom’s AI-boosted quarter
• Read more about AI Companion’s new language capabilities

Microsoft Reveals Dates for Major Annual Events, Announces Major AI Partnership With Mistral

Microsoft has announced the dates for its major 2024 events, including Microsoft Ignite, Build and AI Tour.

Microsoft Ignite was confirmed for Chicago, November 18-22, 2024, while Build was confirmed for May 21-23, 2024.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Microsoft’s campaign to frame 2024 as the year of the AI PC, Microsoft positioned artificial intelligence front and centre in the previews for its 2024 events.

“2023 was a year of exciting growth and innovation here at Microsoft,” said Takeshi Numoto, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft. “This year’s focus is to empower our customers and partners through AI transformation, and we’re excited to share what will be an impactful lineup of events for 2024. Attending any of these events provides you with the opportunity to learn, grow and make defining connections with experts from around the world.”

Microsoft’s Inspire Event, which took place in July last year and is designed for the vendor’s partner community, has been scrapped as an in-person showcase. In what the tech giant describes as “the next chapter” for Inspire, the event planned for this July will occur online.

In other Microsoft news, the tech giant has partnered with French AI business Mistral in a multiyear deal to commercialise its new language models.

Mistral’s open and commercial language models will now be accessible on Microsoft’s Azure AI platform. Microsoft’s partnership with Mistral, which has existed for ten months but is valued at around $2.1 billion, intends to prioritise the advancement and implementation of next-generation large language models.

It is Microsoft’s second major AI partnership after OpenAI, which was the first company to offer a commercial language model on Azure and in which Microsoft has invested around $13 billion over the past four years.

• Read more about the upcoming Microsoft events
• Read more about the Microsoft and Mistral partnership

X Expands Audio and Video Calls to All Users

X has expanded its audio and video calling capabilities to all users.

Previously restricted to X Premium subscribers, the capability was introduced to iOS users of the app formerly known as Twitter in October as part of owner Elon Musk’s ambition to transform the platform into an “everything” app.

Last month, X launched the feature set on Android, too, but it was still limited to users willing to stump up $8 a month or $84 a year for a Premium subscription. However, at the time, all users could still receive audio and video calls.

Users can find options for audio and video calls within the DM settings tab in the X platform. Additionally, users can manage their call preferences through the settings page.

Musk was bullish about X’s potential to challenge established communications giants like WhatsApp, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, saying on the platform that he was getting rid of his phone number, such was his faith in his company’s “everything app” project.

• Read more

Tim Cook: Apple Will ‘Break New Ground’ on Gen AI In 2024

Tim Cook has promised that Apple will “break new ground” on generative AI in 2024.

Cook’s comments were delivered during Apple’s annual shareholders meeting. They follow explanations from Cook during Apple’s Q1 earnings call in which he said Apple was developing gen AI internally but emphasised a cautious and deliberate approach to introducing consumer-facing gen AI iterations.

Compared to the likes of Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Amazon and Zoom, AI hasn’t been at the forefront of what Apple has been promoting or selling.

Apart from Apple adding new autocorrect and text prediction features in iOS last autumn, news also broke last July that Apple employees were using the tech giant’s in-house generative AI, nicknamed Apple GPT, to boost their productivity.

A recent Bloomberg report suggests Apple intends to enhance Siri and iOS’ built-in search tool, Spotlight, by integrating GenAI models. This aims to empower both platforms to address more intricate prompts and manage advanced multi-turn conversations.

However, as this latest earnings call illustrated, any significant gen AI service designed for sophisticated enterprise or consumer use cases seems far off. Whether this “groundbreaking” gen AI reveal will feature Ajax or an entirely new LLM and product is currently up in the air.

• Read more