‘AI models are only as powerful as their understanding of your business’: Zoom’s new features aim to bridge glaring business context gaps

Zoom has unveiled a new Unified Context Layer designed to help enterprises bridge gaps between the platform and internal business knowledge sources.

Announced at the Zoomtopia customer conference this week, the Unified Context Layer will help enterprise users link conversation histories with relevant documents and data, the company revealed.

Put simply, the company hopes to close what it describes as a traditional gap between the platform itself and internal operations. Details from various meetings, conversations, and team calls are often left by the wayside, particularly when used alongside third-party applications.

With the new Unified Context Layer, Zoom will now bring together conversations with “near real-time activity” across the platform as well as connected third-party applications.

Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said this trend shows “AI models are only as powerful as their understanding of your business”.

“That context makes all the difference,” he commented. “Fragmented product experiences isolate conversations, stall decisions, and drag businesses down.”

“With the Unified Context layer, we’re laying the groundwork for a system of action designed to turn conversations into completed work.”

Poor business context has become a recurring pain point for enterprises dabbling in AI, as research shows. In a recent study from Alteryx, 77% of firms said business context is critical for AI, yet 53% said they struggle to incorporate this within AI systems and workflows.

Under the hood of Zoom’s Unified Context Layer

With the new Unified Context Layer, Zoom is rolling out a range of new features and capabilities. Include the ability to “follow the meeting”.

This will provide users personalized transcripts and summaries for those who miss a meeting, or at least parts of it.

“Enriched notes” will also link shared screens, charts, slide decks, and in-meeting chat conversations to specific parts within a transcript.

A key talking point with the new features centers around new notes workflows, according to Zoom. This will carry over meeting summaries into various third-party tools such as Salesforce.

Zoom said this will provide users with “ready-made workflows for sales, marketing, and IT”, or custom workflows built by describing what to automate using natural language.

The result here is that no separate workflow builders are required, improving ease of use and creating a more consistent workflow.

Tackling deepfake challenges

Elsewhere, Zoom also unveiled new tools aimed at tackling deepfake-related security threats. Deepfake risk detection capabilities will automatically flag “potential synthetic media” in meeting scenarios, as well as in hiring processes and customer experience contexts.

The move by Zoom comes amidst huge growth of deepfake-related incidents at enterprises spanning an array of industries.

As ITPro reported in September, nearly half of CISOs reported being hit by AI deepfake voice calls in the last year, with a further 36% reporting the same in a video call.

Deepfake techniques are also being used by cyber criminals to secure roles at enterprises, research shows.

This is a common tactic used by fake North Korean IT workers, with a host of organizations having unwittingly hired cyber criminals over the last 18 months.

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