Zoom: AI technology and its potential to go further

If there’s a new word, everyone has learnt during lockdown it most surely is Zoom. Zoom calls have been the pandemic’s lifeline and have helped many organisations facilitate team calls and meetings while working remotely. During May and June, Zoom’s share prices rocketed to an all-time high, evident from the graph below.

Technology has played one of the biggest roles in the pandemic, not forgetting to mention its involvement in creating vaccines.

However, what if you were told your future Zoom calls may be taken a step further, enabling participants to feel a handshake with a colleague or even smell their coffee through your screen.

The founder and CEO of Zoom, Eric Yuan, has claimed that AI technology could revolutionise video calls in the future, bringing a physical aspect to virtual meetings.

Although the vaccine for covid-19 looks promising, there’s still a big question mark surrounding the need for employees to be in the office now if remote working is proving successful.

In contrast to the graph above, since the Pfizer vaccine announcement, share prices for Zoom plummeted. However, these quick economic changes do not reflect the world in its reality.

Although the vaccine is promising, how long will it be till whole countries are vaccinated to go back to work and share office spaces physically? This uncertainty means businesses will still need to rely heavily on services like Zoom. Here’s a look at some of the ways AI can transform video communication.

Live translation

For some organisations with bases dotted worldwide, communicating via video calls has its own set of issues despite usual connection issues.

Language barriers can prevent businesses from excelling as information can become lost in transit. AI could help solve this and overcome language barriers, especially for smaller businesses looking to expand their reach globally.

Facial identification in meetings

Some team calls consist of 4 to 5 employees, and some consist of many more. When holding events via video call or mass meetings, facial recognition software using AI could be helpful. Rather than adding bylines manually or lists of speakers, AI could automate the process making life much easier.

Facial recognition technology can already be found on many Apple and Android smart devices, so integrating it into video calls should be simple.

This type of technology could also work well for schools that have been forced to hold classes online. Students can be automatically recognised and noted in for attendance.

Meeting transcription and indexing done automatically.

Meetings can go on for some time, too long for attention spans to handle everything discussed. Transcription and indexing video calls will help ensure everyone understands what was discussed in the call and what needs to be done.

This type of AI technology can work well in the medical healthcare setting. Patient video consultations can be recorded, kept in the right place for review, and easy access should the information be needed at a follow-up appointment.

The AI technology could automatically generate follow up appointments based on information from the video call whilst indexing it correctly.

Direct action assigning

AI can help make assigning tasks easier by interpreting conversations and understanding who needs to do what. This will help teams stay on top of what needs to be done.

Everyone leaves the meeting with clear goals and targets with timelines of when they need to be completed and if they will be reviewed at the next meeting. The chart below shows what employees think are the key elements to a successful meeting.

When AI technology brings these features to video communication, it could be a massive game-changer for the way businesses are run. If Zoom manages to roll out their physical concept features on Zoom calls, the way we work could change dramatically.

Travelling internationally to meet with clients personally will be a thing of the past, reducing travel costs and carbon footprints for businesses. Systems can run much smoother as employees will fully understand their tasks and how best to complete them.

Zoom calls and many other technological advancements have had a vital impact on businesses and education. We now have the tools that we need for businesses to be great.

We only need to understand how to implement them for best practice and use them to get the most out of employees and push businesses forward.

One thing for sure is that moving forward, we will see many more video calling services boom from the pandemic. But the only ones that will work the best are the ones that can offer their customers the most for the least. And so, if Zoom wants to stay ahead of the game, they may have to reconsider their 40-minute free cap.

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