At Telebu, Prasanth leads the product strategy and development teams which together focus on building enterprise/customer communication products that are intuitive, customer centric, scalable, secure, compatible, iterable, constantly evolving, and businesses can build around them. He works closely with Sales & Marketing to plan product roadmaps, strategize, and identify ways to improve adoption & retention. Prasanth is a technology leader who always stays on the top of emerging technologies. His approach towards technology is driven by his belief that for a Product, market fit is not a permanent state rather it is a transient one. Products need to constantly evolve.
Needless to say, with each passing day, technology is proving itself to be a boon for mankind in every other aspect. Today, the possibilities of its tools such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are endless. While AI enables a machine to simulate human behavior, ML is a subset of it that allows a machine to automatically gain knowledge from past data without any explicit programming. With work from home becoming a “here to stay” trend due to the pandemic, a recent survey conducted by PwC reveals that approximately 72 per cent of companies are planning to invest in new tech-savvy instruments to enhance the overall experience of working remotely. In between rolling out of bed, putting on a smart upper half, and setting up your hair, all just to attend Zoom meetings, such advancements, especially AI, is nothing less than a blessing in disguise. Let’s learn more about it.
What is the role of AI in video conferences?
In order to support a flexible working environment, it is important for people to have coming-of-age techs that help them work efficiently and boost their productivity. By imbuing AI applications in the mechanism, the process becomes easier and advanced. Designing these capabilities into tools like video conferencing can add genuine worth.
A recent study from Frost & Sullivan predicts that Artificial Intelligence is going to play a significant part in driving the development of the video conferencing market via applications that will deliver more natural and relevant meeting experiences. Unlike the days of yore, video conferencing today is a much broader industry that has the power to expand further with the help of emerging AI applications. The pandemic seems to be a great turning point for the sector as more and more organizations are gradually considering it as an ideal solution for connecting with remote employees as well as clients. The progress in AI can drastically further improve the user experience and drive efficiencies by mechanizing tedious tasks.
What are its advantages?
While 60 per cent of the respondents, in a recent survey conducted by Zoom, felt that AI would be extremely useful in their video meetings, nearly 73 per cent of them said that they expect it to have a positive impact on meetings. Thereby, clearly highlighting its importance. Here are a few noteworthy benefits of AI in the video conferencing sector:
- Even before WFH became the norm, video conferencing had been used to save time as well as reduce travel expenses. Now, they have become the go-to solution for every collaboration. Right from noise cancellation/suppression, speech recognition to in-meeting digital assistants and AI-powered data analytics, AI in video conferencing has the power to transform the future. All the eponymous factors have, especially, been proven beneficial in the case of remote working.
- It is useful for automatically adjusting the zoom for delivering a quality video experience. When the target participant changes or moves, the camera control allows it to automatically frame him/her by tilting, panning, or zooming. Protecting your privacy in a ‘WFH meeting’ or simply hiding the chaotic surroundings, it can be really helpful in virtual backgrounds also.
- It assists in the video as well as audio improvements. The former focuses on virtual backgrounds, framing, alternative layouts, and quality of the picture, the latter lets you cancel active noises by creating acoustic fencing. Pre-trained machine learning algorithms suppress all sounds be it from pets, car horns, slamming of doors, the rustling of papers, or notifications on laptops, in turn, providing you a perfect atmosphere for work from home.
- AI-powered predictive data analytics solutions provide real-time performance updates, detect anomalies, and forecast performance degradation by continuously monitoring networks and endpoints. It allows IT specialists to step in only when they are affected by a bad connection or other technological issues.
- From creating a top-line meeting summary, transcribing conversations to delivering the notes to the participants, AI-based assistants can do wonders. Through the utilization of natural language processing (NLP), the assistants can proactively access and provide relevant data according to the discussion. AI can also easily contribute to the meeting by designing graphs, blueprints, or diagrams in order to illustrate the topic being discussed.
- Real-time translation helps participants of the meeting to understand discussions even if they are not in their native language as NLP has the ability to understand the text and spoken words in the same way human beings can. AI has the ability to support audio translations as well so that the participants can hear all the conversations in their language.
- AI-driven devices make meetings run quite efficiently. You can easily interact with conferencing systems to schedule many tasks. For instance, you can automate duties by telling chatbots to reschedule a call or fix a particular time for a meeting. Give the first names of the invitees along with the time and date of the meeting and you are all set. It can even suggest the resources and documents that you may need while attending the video conference.
Summing up: What is the future?
Undoubtedly, the pandemic has accelerated the demand for video conferencing and it will continue to improve in the coming years. AI has immense potential to transform it and enable more productive meetings, at the same time, providing a much better user experience. All major players in the industry must ensure that new progressions in AI are made while keeping the customers’ security in mind. Simply by working on the reliability of these emerging video conferencing tools we can drive its growth. Consider it a key for ensuring all industry players can receive the rewards of this innovation. AI in video conferencing isn’t for everyone, nor will it continue to be the norm for everyone. However, it will help make a difference in the future.
AI can be, certainly, considered as a true panacea!