Cisco integrates AI tools to enhance Webex experience

Global technology giant Cisco is integrating AI tools into Webex to improve performance, communication and collaboration. With the introduction of the tools, Webex will use AI in real-time to ensure crystal-clear audio and video calls and meetings despite low bandwidth. The use of AI offerings was earlier focused on only text or documents in Webex. 

In addition, Cisco is also launching a new Webex AI Assistant with new capabilities for bolstering productivity and accuracy for customers. The new AI tools and Webex AI Assistant will be applied across the full Webex portfolio — The Webex Suite, Cisco Collaboration devices, Webex Contact Center, Webex Connect and Webex Control Hub. Customers like McLaren Racing and Team DSM are testing Webex’s new AI capabilities. 

Also Read: Cisco beefs up cybersecurity play with $28-bn Splunk deal

“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,” said Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration. “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.” 

Also Read: Cisco to start manufacturing in India, eyes export from India

Cisco’s new Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) will have the ability to take multiple media streams and produce multiple outputs, such as people and object recognition and action analytics like movement and gestures. RMMs in Webex will also enable audio and video channels to be used as signals of context in traditional text-based capabilities like meeting summaries and highlights. By uniquely fusing together AI for text, audio and video, Webex users will benefit from rich real-time insights. For example, in the future, Webex may be able to recognise that a meeting participant stepped away from a meeting, and capture meeting notes to bring that person up to speed when they return. 

Also, network impairments can have a direct impact on calls and meetings. Cisco is unveiling a new AI Codec in Webex, a new generative AI solution that will redefine real-time communication and solve the challenge of audio quality. The audio Codec aims to deliver crystal-clear audio regardless of network conditions, even in areas with spotty connections. Webex’s efficiency with its AI Codec allows for massive transmission redundancy to recover from network packet loss. Webex AI Codec also has built-in speech enhancement functions like noise removal, de-reverberation and bandwidth extension, to deliver unprecedented audio clarity. 

The newly launched Webex AI Assistant is designed to help minimise work and costs for IT. It will prompt users with questions like “ask me about the meeting,” that users can respond to with typing sentences, such as “catch me up on the 15 minutes I missed in the meeting” or “catch me up on all the meetings I missed on Friday while I was on PTO,” to generate answers in real-time. Webex AI Assistant is already natively integrated into Cisco Collaboration devices and will span the Webex portfolio. 

These new capabilities are in various stages of availability, with shipping planned to begin before the end of 2023.