AI IN COMMUNICATION: HOW AI TAKES UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS TO THE NEXT LEVEL

In what seems like an extremely short time frame, AI has become one of the fastest-growing emerging technologies the modern world has seen. AI is projected to grow into a $407 billion industry by 2027 from its estimated $86.9 billion in 2022.

Unified communications is one area where AI is blazing a pathway toward the future. Below, we’ll look at some of the ways AI is used in communication software, along with some of the downsides to artificial intelligence in business communication and what the immediate future looks like for AI.

AI is enhancing the ways we connect with clients and coworkers, from helping us keep track of what was covered in meetings to uncovering insights we may not have picked up on.  

We’ll look at AI features in the top three unified communication platforms and also two of the top integrations that are maximizing AI’s capabilities. 

Google is rolling out a wide range of AI features that can be used across all of Google Workspace’s applications, including Meet. Its AI, called Duet AI, includes several features.

Duet AI can translate your meeting into several different languages.

This feature provides details about major points discussed throughout a meeting.

If you need more detail than the recap provides but want to avoid trawling through the entire transcript, notation takes notes throughout the entire meeting.

Google incorporates AI on multiple fronts, so Duet AI brings several unique features to Meet, allowing users to enhance their video and audio quality, generate unique backgrounds, and other audiovisual features.

Microsoft Teams Premium offers several AI-based features.

AI-powered insights give users auto-generated meeting notes, task recommendations, and personalized highlights.

Teams uses ChatGPT-based AI to provide key points and takeaways from meetings.

Premium offers suggested actionable tasks for users to carry out based on meeting data.

Premium provides users with a recap of meetings.

Teams Premium marks the meeting with relevant timeline markers, including data about who spoke in a given time, making it easy to jump straight to specific moments during replay.

Beyond the major UC platforms, new AI developments can connect your preferred UC platform to other applications—such as your CRM platform—and unlock incredible new metrics.

Gong uses AI to provide powerful insights to sales teams, letting you learn from the length of meetings and how thoroughly topics were covered, then building these insights into improved sales and forecasting so you can ultimately land more deals.

Much like Gong, Chorus uses AI to provide your sales team with powerful intelligence, insights, and forecasting so you can always ascertain what’s working and what needs improvement.

AI offers a wealth of features that enhance unified communications. Some of the main advantages of artificial intelligence in business communications include the following.

AI is able to simplify redundant, manual tasks that have historically eaten into our schedules. Taking notes, highlighting important moments in meetings, and even setting up reminders are all new ways that AI is utilized in video conferencing to improve efficiency, reduce manual processes, and increase productivity.

The features that unified communications platforms add will continue to change quickly in the AI space, but one of the clear benefits each platform focuses on is personalization. With machine learning (ML), AI pays attention to how users react to the technology, which features they use the most, and what helps their productivity. This makes it possible for AI to fine-tune itself toward your personal tastes and preferences as you continue to use the application.

As AI advances, it is able to draw more complex conclusions about massive data sets. We’re used to tracking certain metrics, but AI is able to broaden how different metrics are correlated, helping us gain much deeper insight into how we communicate and conduct business.

AI can take information about a person’s interaction in a meeting and offer recommendations to help them become more effective in a presentation.

As an emerging technology, AI is not without faults. And, since we have all become much more dependent on video conferencing, it’s important to consider some of the downsides to the early days of AI. 

These are a few of the top concerns.

AI is in its infancy, and as such, it comes with the risk of providing inaccurate data. It may not properly transcribe data that is misheard or may run into issues tracking who is speaking and falsely attribute the wrong source. There are many ways AI can make mistakes throughout a meeting, and as people rely on it, there’s the potential for users to be less diligent about double-checking whether the information is true.

Just because technology exists doesn’t mean everyone is willing to use it. There’s often a steep learning curve to properly implement new technology and make the best use of it.

It’s one thing for AI to simply make errors when transcribing data or providing notations, but algorithmic bias is an entirely different issue that still plagues AI in its early days of implementation. 

With algorithmic bias, it’s possible for AI to provide inaccurate meeting information based on inferences it makes due to biases introduced during training. This could take the form of AI telling you individuals made certain statements in a meeting that they never said or providing summaries that change the meaning of the information in its full context. 

This bias can lead AI to falsely represent or incorrectly interpret information even though it fully understood the original data.

Technology companies aren’t finished looking for new ways to incorporate AI-based features into their products. As the capabilities of AI continue to advance, we will see the technology become more deeply integrated into the actual equipment we rely upon.

AI will likely be used to enhance the quality of audio and video transmitted in meetings. With machine learning (ML), AI will become increasingly more competent in understanding speech and assessing what is happening in video streams, allowing it to provide real-time improvements to what we see and hear.

This includes helping replace garbled video or sound and compensating for glitches during an online meeting.

AI will make use of conference room sensors to improve how audiovisual equipment tracks the current speaker at a given time and make more sophisticated deductions about how to track movement, zooming in on individuals to improve how they’re framed in video, and similar benefits.

AI and ML will also continue to become more advanced in enhancing productivity. Companies will never stop pursuing new ways to boost efficiency, reduce costs, and maximize the use of human capital, so there will continue to be trends in AI that maximize how we spend time in communication with one another, helping us to gain insights from robust metrics, and simplifying our lives.

Our team loves helping our clients get the most from their unified communication systems. If you’re wondering which platform is best for your team or are unsure of what unified communications equipment you need, get in touch with us today!