Cisco Brings More AI Voice Capabilities to Webex Meetings

Several months after acquiring artificla intelligence assistant company Voicea, Cisco is bringing AI capabilities to Webex meetings to create more engaged meetings.

The company announced the news Tuesday at Cisco Live Europe.

According to a press release, Cisco is bringing AI-powered voice intelligence capabilities to Webex meetings “to help turn talk into action.” Dubbed the Cisco Webex Assistant for Webex Meetings, the new feature is powered by technology the company acquired after consuming Voicea in September.

In a statement, Sri Srinivasan, senior vice president and general manager of team collaboration at Cisco, said Voicea users have said they’ve saved more than six hours per week per user with more actionable and efficient meetings.

“We’re excited to bring this and other cognitive features to the 300 million users we already serve with Cisco Collaboration,” he said. “This technology will fundamentally change how we are able to deliver massively personalized experiences and transform the way we work.”

According to Cisco, Webex Assistant for Meetings is the first digital in-meeting assistant for the enterprise. Voice commands can automate mundane tasks like note-taking and transcribing so everyone can focus on the substance of the meeting.

Other abilities include:

Highlighting
Searchable transcripts across meetings,
Action items,
Speaker labeling
Post-meeting features to enable easy editing and sharing of all meeting materials.

Soon, Webex Assistant for Webex Rooms will be able to understand and speak back in Spanish, which Cisco said was the no. 1 customer request for what language the assistant should learn next.

In addition to the AI-related features, Cisco said customers now have a choice of where their Webex Teams data like users, keys, messages and files will be stored: either in Europe or the U.S.

Cisco also announced the Cisco Webex Room USB to give smaller companies the same collaboration tools without compromise.