Breeze through online meetings with AI-powered capabilities

Innovation is often seen as an improvement on an invention that fosters economic growth.

In the technology-driven collaboration space, one such invention came in 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell introduced the telephone, and the innovation, through his team, came in 1930 - with the launch of two-way video-telephony.

Today, we're on the cusp of another landmark achievement: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) with modern web conferencing and collaboration platforms to facilitate "cognitive collaboration". We have entered the age of AI and the more people learn about it and use it, the more we can realise the quantum of change this innovation is bringing or would bring to us.

AI, in itself, is an ever-evolving technology that powers many of today's marvels. In the collaboration space, AI has the power to truly augment the experience of conference call participants, ensuring they are able to make the most of their time. On web conferencing and collaboration platforms that use advanced AI algorithms - such as Webex - participants could actually get better results than doing in-person meetings, and feel almost like superheroes thanks to four "superpowers" that AI can grant.

AI-powered virtual assistants have made significant progress in recent years. From making a phone call and playing music, to ordering a pizza and checking your balance in your bank account, these intelligent assistants can do almost anything. On Webex, they can recognise users when they enter a meeting room using proximity pairing, start a conference call using proactive join, or use simple voice commands to record a meeting, take notes, and more. Close to nine in 10 respondents surveyed by NTT recently say a virtual assistant can increase productivity immediately.

Webex now comes with a feature called "People Insights", which scours the internet to help meeting participants learn more about each other quickly, just prior to or during the call. Think of it as a little personal assistant on your screen, telling you about what matters most to the people you're speaking with - and when you're speaking with them.

Closely aligned with People Insights is our facial recognition capability which helps participants recognise who is talking, even in a crowded meeting room. Our conference room tools also allow participants to pan and zoom into the speaker during a video call to remove distractions and make the conversation more focused. We also use AI to detect and suppress background noise that is often unavoidable, such as sirens outside the office and keyboard clicks.

When I speak with our clients, I find that these four superpowers are enough to get people excited. They're easy to visualise, the results they deliver are easy to quantify, and the savings they offer are easy to realise.

The NTT survey I cited earlier says that 53 per cent of organisations believe smart meeting rooms that provide workers with intuitive access to various types of conferencing technologies are central to significantly improving business processes and AI-powered capabilities, such as those offered by Webex, are exactly what executives are looking for.

All of this is enough to light a spark in the eyes of our customers - but AI has a lot more in store for today's users, because it's a technology that's ever-evolving.

For me, the coolest new capabilities that we have developed by plugging AI into Webex include live transcription and live translation. These two solutions not only delight customers, but also save them hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars, as executives can then focus on getting things done.

Every time you're on a Webex call, you can read what your colleagues say even if you don't understand their accent perfectly well, or worse, don't speak the language they're most comfortable in. That's the magic of technology: It can not only transform business in the coming months, but also revolutionise how we collaborate and innovate in the digital-first world we now live in. Such capabilities allow you and your team to put your minds together enterprise wide - no matter how global your team.

The massive disruptions caused by the pandemic has resulted in a sharp rise in demand for web conferencing and collaboration platforms. It has also shown us why security should be top of mind for enterprises looking to protect their data and reputation while staying productive during full or partial lockdowns.

At Cisco, we believe in adopting a security-first approach, which is reflected in every innovation and advancement that we've brought to market. As a result, Webex is not only trusted by leading Fortune 500 and Fortune 100 companies, but also by ministries, government agencies, and key regulatory authorities.

We understand that having superpowers is a privilege and must be used responsibly.

Hence, when we develop AI-powered capabilities, we ensure that we stay true to our design philosophy which focuses on reducing the risk of access of personal information at every step of the process. This is demonstrated perfectly when we discuss our facial recognition feature which not only tokenises the data behind the facial recognition algorithm to avoid transmitting face image data to and from the cloud, but also runs the algorithm on the local device inside the conference room to reduce the risk of data breaches, theft and interference by outside agents.

Being a large enterprise ourselves, we have the right processes and policies that manage data in a way that is logical as well as responsible. When an organisation or one of their users leave our platform, all related data, including machine learning models, is deleted.

Taking a step back to look at the big picture, the reality is that while security is non-negotiable, executives are facing greater pressure to collaborate and will use any platform they find suitable if their organisation doesn't provide them with something that is both intelligent and convenient. Companies that want to facilitate innovation have to make a choice now.