There’s a lot to not like about video meetings. The potato-quality visuals. The audio dropouts. The screen fatigues. Now Cisco is betting that generative AI can change that.
The telecom and networking company has announced that it’s harnessing generative AI to maintain clear audio and video calls, regardless of whether you’re calling from a remote village in Bangladesh or a buzzing urban center in Seoul. The technology will be rolled out on all of its Webex video conferencing products, Jeetu Patel, executive vice president of security and collaboration at Cisco told Quartz.
So how does the company use generative AI to keep video and audio quality clear even when the Internet is sluggish? Essentially, the technology re-creates the data that maintains a meeting connection, which helps prevent audio from dropping, explained Patel. When it comes to video, generative AI can be used to reconstruct the video to look like an HD-quality one.
Even if AI improves video quality, there’s a separate question of whether these features could solve one of video call’s biggest problems: “Zoom fatigue,” the well-documented drain we feel after enduring long stretches of screen time, checking ourselves constantly during calls, and working harder to interpret gestures and nonverbal cues.
Cisco’s announcement highlights how the generative AI tools companies are rolling out are not just for penning a blog post or summing up meetings. In addition to the connection tools, the company has also built an AI model that provides real-time context—like visual gestures and verbal signals—that are typically missed in video meetings.
When a user leaves an AI-enhanced Webex video call, the video camera will detect that they’re no longer in frame; it will then display an onscreen message that says the person is away, without that person needing to notify the 10 other users in the meeting. Users will also be able to put their hands in the shape of a heart or clap to others in the meeting, and the call will convert those gestures to a ❤️ or 👏 emoji onscreen. The company said the new features will be available early next year.
Every company is turning to AI
Though Cisco is the first of the video conferencing makers to announce new generative AI-related features, its competitors Zoom, Google, and Microsoft are likely also working on similar features for their video conferencing tools.
The reality is that ever since ChatGPT was released to the public last November, Cisco, like every other corporation, has been figuring out how to implement generative AI within their products and services.
Cisco’s latest announcement is perhaps an indicator of where generative AI is heading—not going to solve our world’s problems, nor lead to a doomsday scenario, but to press forward new momentum in digital technology’s capabilities.