On-line conferences was once a lot the identical as their bodily world counterparts.
With the introduction of generative AI, on-line assembly platforms started so as to add new insights, together with voice transcription providers. Platform distributors, together with Microsoft Groups, Google Meet and Cisco WebEx, have steadily built-in capabilities that transcend what in-person bodily conferences can present.
Now within the rising period of agentic AI, on-line conferences are poised to diverge even additional with a brand new wave of improvements. Zoom lately introduced its agentic AI efforts which goals to create the paradigm shift from conferences to milestones. Microsoft has added copilot actions which might combine with its Microsoft Groups service serving to customers within conferences to get perception and join with different Microsoft providers. Cisco has been steadily increasing its AI capabilities in Webex, and introduced a Webex AI agent on the finish of 2024 that helps with contact middle deployments.
One other agency that has been significantly energetic within the house is Otter AI, which is considerably differentiated in that it’s not straight tethered to any particular on-line assembly vendor platform. Whereas Otter first made its mark as an AI-powered voice transcription service, it has added an AI assistant referred to as Otter Pilot, an AI chat assistant, and a collection of assembly capabilities generally known as Assembly GenAI.
Right this moment, Otter goes a step additional, with its foray into agentic AI. Whereas among the agentic AI options that Otter is including will not be distinctive, it’s doing at the least one factor that isn’t but a part of each agentic AI assembly expertise. Otter AI is now being built-in as an entity within a gathering that may truly reply by voice to queries.
Not is the AI an exterior participant accessible simply by way of a chat window; AI is now a dwell entity that’s actually a part of the assembly.
The rise of AI assembly brokers: Past silent observers
For the final a number of years, AI assembly assistants have been passive observers—transcribing conversations, creating summaries and permitting post-meeting queries. Otter is now altering this dynamic with its AI Assembly Agent, which might actively take part in conversations when summoned.
“The brand new AI assembly agent we’re constructing can be in a position that can assist you with voice in real-time conferences,” Sam Liang, CEO of Otter AI informed VentureBeat. “Through the assembly, you’ll be able to say, ‘Hey Otter,’ and ask it questions.”
In a dwell demonstration with VentureBeat, Liang confirmed how the agent may reply factual questions, present assembly summaries and even schedule follow-up conferences—all by voice instructions throughout an energetic dialog.
What makes this significantly highly effective is the agent’s capacity to hook up with an organization’s information ecosystem.
“This agent can turn into a website professional,” Liang famous. “Once you’re having a gathering, it has nearly infinite information from the web, however this agent additionally has information about your enterprise.”
Autonomous brokers: When AI runs the assembly
Taking agentic functionality a step additional, Otter can also be launching an autonomous SDR (Gross sales Improvement Consultant) agent that may independently conduct whole conferences with out human intervention. This agent greets web site guests, conducts product demonstrations and schedules follow-up conferences with human gross sales representatives.
“We can’t rent 1,000,000 human brokers to reply questions, however we constructed this Otter SDR agent that features like a gross sales improvement consultant who can greet each single customer and provides them a dwell demo,” Liang stated.
The usage of chatbots and avatar-based programs just isn’t new. Liang argued that what distinguishes his firm’s expertise from present avatar-based options is its capacity to conduct multimedia product demonstrations in actual time. The autonomous agent can share screens, display product options and reply to particular questions on performance and pricing.
The technical structure of agentic AI for conferences
Agentic AI is an overloaded and considerably overhyped time period within the business at this time general.
Functionally agentic AI is about enabling actions, which may be performed by combining a number of fashions with a software like LangChain or through the use of the function-calling capabilities current in lots of fashions.
Liang has an much more nuanced definition for agentic AI.
“Brokers generally are a extra subtle AI system that may break down a big and sophisticated process into smaller duties,” he stated. “It will possibly do reasoning and it may possibly do some planning to carry out a process.”
Otter just isn’t utilizing LangChain however has developed its personal customized expertise particularly designed for the challenges of multi-speaker voice environments. The technical structure combines each public information retrieval and proprietary enterprise data by a customized RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Technology) implementation. This allows the agent to grasp company-specific data like worker names, mission terminology and inside acronyms.
The way forward for assembly intelligence isn’t simply agentic AI
What agentic AI is bringing to on-line assembly platforms represents a strong new set of capabilities for organizational effectivity.
For many years, organizational effectivity consultants have warned concerning the dangers of wasted time in conferences. Fashionable AI-powered platforms are altering that threat. Final week Zoom’s CTO informed me that his aim was to maneuver the expertise from conferences to milestones, the place the output of a gathering isn’t simply one other assembly however actionable issues that may profit the group.
Whereas agentic AI can create workflows, there may be nonetheless additionally profit in common AI assistants that aren’t truly agentic. There’ll nonetheless be standalone AI assistants and totally agentic ones and that’s a very good factor, in accordance with Anurag Dhingra, SVP & GM, Enterprise Connectivity and Collaboration at Cisco.
“Whereas AI brokers act as autonomous do-ers and AI assistants function prompted helpers, each supply advantages in boosting productiveness and enhancing general collaboration,” Dhingra informed VentureBeat. “It’s not a matter of selecting one over the opposite however fairly leveraging their mixed strengths to create environments the place groups can concentrate on innovation and strategic decision-making.”
What can also be beginning to occur is extra interoperability throughout totally different platforms. For instance, Cisco’s AI Assistant will work with workflow purposes corresponding to Salesforce, ServiceNow and Outlook.
Strategic implications of Agentic AI for enterprise conferences
For enterprises evaluating their AI adoption roadmap, Otter’s method to assembly brokers represents a strategic inflection level.
Relatively than implementing general-purpose AI and hoping for ROI, organizations ought to contemplate how domain-specific assembly brokers can handle concrete ache factors with measurable impacts.
As AI continues to evolve from instruments we use, to colleagues we work with, the differentiation will more and more be discovered not within the underlying fashions however in how successfully they’re skilled to grasp particular enterprise contexts and area information.
