Cisco Debuts AI-Powered Voice Assistant for Meetings

Global networking major, Cisco has unveiled Artificial Intelligence – Powered Voice Assistant for Meetings

AI-powered voice assistants are changing the way we live. Hundreds of millions of people use these assistants regularly to check the weather, wake up on time, and find their way around town.

Yet there have been no virtual assistants to help us at work— until now. At Cisco Partner Summit, Cisco has announced Cisco Spark Assistant. It is an enterprise-ready voice assistant for meetings. It will be available first on the Cisco Spark Room Series portfolio, including the new flagship Cisco Spark Room 70.

Cisco Spark Assistant is the latest innovation on the Cisco Spark platform. Unlike all-purpose voice assistants, Cisco Spark Assistant has one goal: to help you have great meetings that run more smoothly.

“During the next few years, AI meeting bots will be joining our work teams. When they do, people will be able to ditch the drudgery of meeting setup and other logistics to become more creative than ever,” said Rowan Trollope, SVP and GM, Applications Group, Cisco. “The future of great meetings is Spark with AI and our partners have an incredible opportunity to help customers take advantage of this game-changing technology.”

Cisco will release Cisco Spark Assistant in phases, starting early next year. In the first phase, a small group of customers will use select features.

Here is what you will be able to do in phase one:

• Start your meeting without any typing or dialing: ◦ “Hey, Spark. Join the meeting.”
◦ “Hey, Spark. I want to start the meeting.”
◦ “Hey, Spark. Let’s get started.”

• Effortlessly join your own Cisco® WebEx® personal meeting room or one of your co-workers’ rooms: ◦ “Hey, Spark. Call my meeting room.”
◦ “Hey, Spark. Call Victor’s PMR.”
◦ “Hey, Spark. Call Michael’s meeting room.”

• Quickly call anyone in your organization without lifting a finger:
◦ “Hey, Spark. Call Sydney.”

• Control your Cisco Spark endpoint without getting out of your chair:
◦ “Hey, Spark. End the meeting.”

Cisco Spark Assistant will use feedback from this trial to make itself smarter. Eventually it will be able to do much more; for example, it will be able to assign action items and create meeting summaries.