Cisco Systems Inc. today outlined some of the innovative ways it’s planning to use generative artificial intelligence within its Webex communications and collaboration platform.

At its WebexOne event in Anaheim, California, it said it will apply AI to ensure crystal clear audio and video during calls and meetings, while improving the productivity of users. The new capabilities are being made available with the launch of Cisco’s Webex AI Assistant, which will be applied across its entire portfolio, including the Webex Suite, Webex Contact Center, Webex Control Hub and dedicated Cisco Collaboration devices.

Javed Khan, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco Collaboration, told SiliconANGLE that the company is taking a slightly different approach to other companies when it comes to AI. “Language intelligence is great, but when you combine audio and video intelligence, you can get even more insights,” he said.

The video intelligence is enabled with real-time media models, or RMMs, which are designed to enhance the collaborative experience with richer, real-time insights, Cisco said. For instance, its RMMs can detect the movements and gestures of meeting participants to understand when they move away from a meeting, then capture notes on what was said while they were away, to bring them back up to speed when they return.

As for the new AI Audio Codec, it’s focused on improving the audio and video quality in meetings for users with poor connectivity. Cisco explained that choppy audio and video remains one of the biggest challenges for video meeting participants, derailing conversations and frustrating participants. The AI Audio Codec allows for massive transmission redundancy to recover from network packet loss more rapidly and ensure the audio stream is not affected.

According to Khan, it works by taking the audio stream and digitizing it before sending it to end users, with the result being much greater clarity. It also relies on generative AI to fill in the missing gaps, so to speak. “An example might be lost packets, a lost 300 milliseconds of what someone said,” Khan explained. “Generative AI can generate this lost data and fill in the dots.”

At the same time, the AI Audio Codec can enhance the clarity of audio with features such as noise removal, de-reverberation and bandwidth extension. There’s also a new Super Resolution feature that’s designed to sharpen the quality of video, regardless of bandwidth conditions.

Aside from improving the quality of Webex calls, AI can also help to make meeting participants more productive in a number of ways, Cisco said. Webex AI Assistant is designed to perform tasks such as summarizing what was said in a specific meeting, and can also help a user to catch up on what happened in multiple meetings they may have missed.

The summaries also apply to text messages within individual spaces. These can be customized too, so a user can ask Webex AI Assistant to focus only on the messages sent by their boss in a space that contains messages from multiple people, for example.

Another new feature is Change Message Tone, which can help users to ensure they strike the right tone when messaging their colleagues in order to come across as being more professional. “We’ve had a lot of success with the tone of someone’s voice,” Khan said. “We will be taking baby steps, but we expect to use this more aggressively in contact centers, such as noticing raised voices or the fatigue of call center employees.”

For Webex Contact Center agents, the assistant can also offer “suggested responses” for contact center agents to quickly reply with customers. The actual suggestions will be based on the customer’s history and the context of their request or query, Cisco said. Lastly, Webex AI will deliver Slido Topic summaries for common topics shared in interactive Q&As and polls during virtual and hybrid events, helping participants to easily navigate what’s trending.

According to Khan, the new AI capabilities within Webex are in various stages of availability, with the first expected to become available before the end of the year. “We are embedding this into the fabric of our platform,” he said.

With reporting from Robert Hof

Photo: Cisco