Cisco unveils new AI strategy for its collaboration platform Webex

San Francisco, Oct 26 (IANS) Global networking giant Cisco has unveiled a new AI strategy for its collaboration platform Webex that will improve real-time communications for audio and video to solve everyday challenges, such as ensuring crystal-clear audio and video calls and meetings despite low bandwidth.

Along with this, the company launched a new Webex AI Assistant with new capabilities that will support productivity and accuracy for customers. 

The Webex AI strategy 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. 

"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," Jeetu Patel, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Cisco Security and Collaboration, said in a statement.

Cisco’s new Real-Time Media Models (RMMs) in Webex, enhancing audio and video quality, 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.

Moreover, 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 will similarly apply machine learning techniques to improve video quality using Super Resolution. 

According to the company, the newly launched Webex AI Assistant will power a robust set of capabilities that empower people to do their best work. 

Webex AI Assistant 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, the company explained.