Cisco Webex has outlined its new AI strategy to transform communication and collaboration.
Announced at Cisco’s WebexOne event in Anaheim, California, Webex’s AI strategy encompasses real-time media models (RMMs) and the Webex AI Codec.
Webex aims to leverage real-time audio and video communications to address everyday challenges, including ensuring perfect audio and video calls even with low bandwidth. Cisco also announced the launch of its new Webex AI Assistant with new features to improve customer productivity and accuracy.
Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager at Cisco Security and Collaboration, commented:
We’re at the tipping point of a new era of hybrid work, with AI holding the key to helping us bridge the gap and enable us all to work and communicate to our full potential. Our Webex platform has long enabled our rapid pace of innovation. Today’s announcement is a monumental step forward, as customers will benefit from AI being pervasive in every aspect of the Webex platform.”
The Webex AI strategy and Webex AI Assistant will be integrated across the complete Webex portfolio, including the Webex Suite, Cisco Collaboration devices, Webex Contact Center, Webex Connect and Webex Control Hub.
Real-Time Media Models
RMMs in Webex will improve audio and video quality by parsing visual and audible cues such as gestures and walking out of the room during a meeting. The models can take multiple media streams and develop multiple outputs, including people and object recognition and action analytics, such as movement and gestures. RMMs in Webex will allow audio and video channels to be utilised as context signals in conventional text-based capabilities like meeting summaries and highlights.
Webex users will benefit from valuable real-time insights by RMMs blending AI for text, audio and video. One future feature that Webex is planning is the capability to recognise when a meeting participant has stepped away from a meeting and consequently capture meeting notes to bring that person up to speed after they return to the call.
Webex AI Codec
The new AI Codec in Webex is a generative AI solution that aims to “redefine real-time communication”, according to Cisco, and address the challenge of audio quality when a user experiences disruption when connecting a call from their car or an area with poor connectivity.
The audio Codec intends to provide crystal-clear audio irrespective of network conditions. Webex’s efficiency with its AI Codec enables significant transmission redundancy to recover from network packet loss. Webex AI Codec includes built-in speech enhancement functions, such as noise removal, de-reverberation and bandwidth extension to offer excellent audio clarity.
Webex will leverage machine learning techniques to enhance video quality using Super Resolution. It will deliver high-definition meetings that offer high-quality video regardless of bandwidth conditions.
Webex AI Assistant
Webex AI Assistant powers a comprehensive set of features that enable people to focus on their most important tasks and will reduce work and costs for IT. Webex AI Assistant will prompt users with general questions, like “Ask me about the meeting,” allowing users to respond with more detailed prompts, such as “Catch me up on the 15 minutes I missed in the meeting”, to produce answers in real-time. Webex AI Assistant is natively integrated into Cisco Collaboration devices and will cover the Webex portfolio.
Its new capabilities include the capability for recommended changes to message tone, format, and phrasing in Webex Messaging and Slido. The Assistant will also suggest responses to messages for contact centre agents interacting with customers on digital channels. Text suggestions are informed by context history and surrounding intelligence.
Webex AI Assistant will also provide real-time meeting summaries, catching users up on missed portions of meetings or entire meetings in real-time with relevant summaries. These Summaries will be delineated into chapters and highlights. Chapters also allows users to skip to various topics.
Message Summaries help people keep informed by recapping unread messages or recapping spaces. Message summaries are personalised, so, for example, a user can ask Webex AI Assistant to summarize messages from their boss in a space that includes messages from several colleagues.
What Else Has Been Announced at Webex One?
Cisco announced that Webex meetings will soon be available on Apple TV 4K and Apple Watch, strengthening Apple’s credibility in the enterprise space.
Apple first revealed that its Apple TV 4K could be transformed into a meeting device using iPhone cameras in June, with the service launching last month. The Webex app will soon be available in the Apple TV App Store, including a QR code system that offers users a seamless login experience.
Additionally, Cisco and Bang & Olufsen have partnered to produce wireless earbuds designed for secure hybrid working.
The Bang & Olufsen Cisco 950 earbuds are developed with advanced security and manageability capabilities with premium sound quality to offer high-quality, customized audio experiences for professionals on the move.
The earbuds are also manageable in Cisco’s Control Hub platform, enabling IT admins and teams greater visibility and control over their groups of collaboration devices. The Bang & Olufsen Cisco 950 is available for order beginning this November at Cisco’s promotional price of $395.
