Zoom Video Communications Inc. admitted that on the request of China, it deactivated accounts of pro-democracy Chinese human rights activists based in the US. This proves that China is censoring content globally.

Zoom admitted this incident in their official blog. In the blog post, Zoom mentioned that Chinese officials reached out to Zoom in May and June about four significant videoconference calls, which were trending on Social Media. These videoconferences were to pay tribute to the Tiananmen Square incident.

Zoom quoted – “In May and early June, we were notified by the Chinese government about four large, public June 4th commemoration meetings on Zoom that were being publicized on social media, including meeting details. The Chinese government informed us that this activity is illegal in China and demanded that Zoom terminate the meetings and host accounts.”

Zoom mentioned that China asked Zoom to terminate the videoconference calls and deactivate host accounts because of the activity, which is deemed illegal.

“For the fourth situation, the Chinese Government showed us a social media invitation for an upcoming meeting referencing a June 4 commemoration event and demanded we take action. The Chinese authorities also notified us of a prior meeting under this account that they considered to be illegal. A US-based Zoom team confirmed the attendance of mainland China participants in that prior meeting.”

As per Zoom, the Chinese officials demanded Zoom to take action, but Zoom kept one of the four meetings undisturbed as there were no participants from Mainland China.

“For one of the meetings, even though the Chinese authorities demanded we take action, we chose to keep the meeting undisturbed because it did not have any participants from mainland China.”

Zoom said in the blog that three of the four meetings had participants from mainland China and Zoom terminated three meetings and deactivated host accounts. Two activists belonged to the US and one from Hong Kong.

“Going forward, Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese government to impact anyone outside of mainland China,” the company said in the blog post.

Zoom announced on Wednesday that it had activated the deactivated activist Zoom accounts. Zoom also mentioned that they are building technology to prevent participants from connecting from specific countries to join video conferencing calls, which were deemed illegal in those countries. The company will release a new policy on June 30.

It is clear now than Zoom shut down the accounts of human rights activists based in the US and in Hong Kong due to the Chinese government pressure.

One of the activist Zhou Fengsuo, a Chinese based in the US, found his zoom account deactivated after he had hosted a memorial for the Tiananmen crackdown.

Another a pro-democracy campaigner, Lee Cheuk-Yan’s account, was also deactivated just before hosting an event. Lee Cheuk-Yan organizes a yearly Tiananmen vigil. He found out that his account was shut down just before hosting an event on an extradition law, which caused mass anti-government protests last year.

Quoting an article from The Guardian,

Lee said Zoom’s response was “shameful” and accused it of “political censorship”. “They have restored my account but Zoom continues to kneel before the Communist party,” he said.

“My purpose on opening Zoom is to reach out to mainland Chinese, breaking the censorship of the Chinese Communist party. With this policy it defeats my original purpose.” He said he had closed his zoom account and requested a refund.

Wang Dan, another activist whose hosted Zoom event on June 3 to pay tribute to Tiananmen crackdown, was shut down twice, said: “The Chinese communist party is actively attacking democracy around the world. They have already started to intervene in the social system and way of life in the US. The whole world should be on alert.”

Wang said Zoom’s statement did not absolve the company from responsibility for infringing on the “rights and interests” of citizens in the US where the company is based. “We will continue to seek the support of the law and public opinion, and ask Zoom to take responsibility for its own wrong behaviour,” he said.

Zoom said that the new measure “will enable us to comply with requests from local authorities when they determine activity on our platform is illegal within their borders”.

“However, we will also be able to protect these conversations for participants outside of those borders where the activity is allowed.”

“We hope that one day, governments who build barriers to disconnect their people from the world and each other will recognize that they are acting against their own interests, as well as the rights of their citizens and all humanity.”

By deactivating and interrupting these calls, Zoom has provoked the world community and forced everyone to think of freedom of speech and censorship by the Chinese Government.

Other U.S.based big tech companies doing business in China have also highlighted this.

Zoom’s actions have forced everyone to think about freedom of thought. Some key officials have also mentioned significant concerns.

US lawmakers and human rights activists have condemned Zoom. US Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, wrote to Zoom CEO Eric Yuan on Thursday.

To Zoom CEO Eric Yuan, Senator Hawley continued, “Trading American values for Beijing profits never ends well. The Chinese Communist Party has a long history of inviting American companies into its borders, only to steal proprietary information and technology and then repurpose that data for its own use. When you censor for the Communist Chinese Party, you may think it benefits you, but the only one who will benefit in the long run is the Chinese Communist Party.” View Full letter here.

Senator Hawkley mentioned in the letter that Zoom is not the first US tech company to censor the content to please China.

“It is time for you to pick a side: American principles and free speech, or short-term global profits and censorship,” he wrote in his letter.

Zoom Chief Executive Officer Eric Yuan was born in China, but he is a US citizen. Zoom has a significant investment in China related to the research-and-development workforce.

Beijing has always employed stringent internet controls. They are censoring content and blocking social media sites to control internet activities even beyond its borders to control its citizens and corporations.

Zoom’s full statement:

We hope that one day, governments who build barriers to disconnect their people from the world and each other will recognize that they are acting against their own interests, as well as the rights of their citizens and all humanity. The reality is Zoom operates in more than 80 countries and continues to expand, which requires compliance with local laws even as Zoom seeks to promote the open exchange of ideas.”

Recent articles in the media about adverse actions we took toward Lee Cheuk-yan, Wang Dan, and Zhou Fengsuo have some calling into question our commitment to being a platform for an open exchange of ideas and conversations. To be clear, their accounts have been reinstated, and going forward, we will have a new process for handling similar situations.

We will do better as we strive to make Zoom the most secure and trusted way to bring people together.

Key Facts

• In May and early June, we were notified by the Chinese Government about four large, public June 4th commemoration meetings on Zoom that were being publicized on social media, including meeting details. The Chinese Government informed us that this activity is illegal in China and demanded that Zoom terminate the meetings and host accounts.
• We did not provide any user information or meeting content to the Chinese Government. We do not have a backdoor that allows someone to enter a meeting without being visible.
• For one of the meetings, even though the Chinese authorities demanded we take action, we chose to keep the meeting undisturbed because it did not have any participants from mainland China.
• For two of the four meetings, a U.S.-based Zoom team reviewed the meeting metadata (such as IP addresses) while the meeting was in progress, and confirmed a significant number of mainland China participants.
• For the fourth situation, the Chinese Government showed us a social media invitation for an upcoming meeting referencing a June 4 commemoration event and demanded we take action. The Chinese authorities also notified us of a prior meeting under this account that they considered to be illegal. A U.S.-based Zoom team confirmed the attendance of mainland China participants in that prior meeting.
• Zoom does not currently have the ability to remove specific participants from a meeting or block participants from a certain country from joining a meeting. As such, we made the decision to end three of the four meetings and suspended or terminated the host accounts associated with the three meetings.

How We Fell Short

We strive to limit actions taken to only those necessary to comply with local laws. Our response should not have impacted users outside of mainland China. We made two mistakes:

• We suspended or terminated the host accounts, one in Hong Kong SAR and two in the US We have reinstated these three host accounts.
• We shut down the meetings instead of blocking the participants by country. We currently do not have the capability to block participants by country. We could have anticipated this need. While there would have been significant repercussions, we also could have kept the meetings running.

Actions We’re Taking

• Going forward Zoom will not allow requests from the Chinese Government to impact anyone outside of mainland China.
• Zoom is developing technology over the next several days that will enable us to remove or block at the participant level based on geography. This will enable us to comply with requests from local authorities when they determine activity on our platform is illegal within their borders; however, we will also be able to protect these conversations for participants outside of those borders where the activity is allowed.
• We are improving our global policy to respond to these types of requests. We will outline this policy as part of our transparency report, to be published by June 30, 2020.

In addition to connecting people for business, education, healthcare, and other professional endeavors, during this global pandemic Zoom has become the platform people all over the world are choosing for human connection. Zoom is proud of the role we are playing globally and fully supports the open exchange of ideas and conversations that bring communities together to meet, organize, collaborate, and celebrate.

Related Article- Zoom sees sales boom amid pandemic

The post Zoom removes activists account following China’s demands appeared first on TECHSEEN.

According to the company, enterprises today are lacking visibility into information proliferation across endpoints, posing a significant risk. The new product that caters to CISOs and IT administrators, states to shorten the time to identify data-breaches to 90 seconds.

ThinAir claims that the new product automatically analyzes every data interaction with real-time information attribution, for example, tracking and recording every single time a person touches information containing credit card numbers. With contextual depth and precision, it can identify suspicious actions in real-time, before threats turn into expensive, and public, breaches.

“ThinAir helps CISOs and security analysts become 10 times faster and more effective, by automating many of the tasks that consume much of their time and effort every day,” said Tony Gauda, Founder and CEO, ThinAir.

“As information becomes the primary asset for today’s organizations, ThinAir’s technology provides visibility and impact assessment. We turn analysts into superheroes by surfacing all user-information interactions, with simplicity and speed.”

New capabilities

• Conversational Interface: ThinAir is comparing its advanced interface with a conversational bot like Apple’s Siri, calling it the “Siri for Security.” According to the company, an analyst can now ask sophisticated search queries in plain English. Asking a question such as, “Who accessed CCN# 12345000001111 in the past week and copied it to USB?” will result in the precise answer, within a few seconds.
• Impact Assessment: The 2.0 includes an “Impact Tab”, a new capability for quick assessment of the full scope of an incident or a breach. Additionally, this feature has the ability to view the financial impact associated with the data, person or device in question.
• 60-Second Onboarding: ThinAir 2.0 also claims to have reduced the time and made it easier to sign-up and start using its product within a minute, omitting the long-drawn proof of concepts or on-premise infrastructure requirement.

The product has been made available in three editions, namely; Express, Professional and Enterprise. Though the company is offering a free trial, ThinAir Professional and Enterprise editions are also available for purchase. At any time, Express users can upgrade to ThinAir Professional or Enterprise plans which will give users access to longer historical visibility and enterprise-level customer support.

The post ThinAir launches conversational UI for threat detection appeared first on TECHSEEN.

“More companies around the world are turning to chat for real-time, internal collaboration. But sometimes text isn’t enough, and chat software must also be able handle voice and video communications as well as the documents, images, and other data related to the work at hand,” said Sridhar Vembu, CEO, Zoho Corp.

“Cliq supports this kind of dynamic, company-wide collaboration. And it provides a degree of future-proofing thanks to its unprecedented extensibility and strong developer community.”

According to the company, the software will provide users with real-time messaging between team members and different departments to foster rapid decision-making. Files of any format can be shared via the chat window in seconds. Separate channels can be created for individual teams, specific projects, company-wide discussions, and other collaboration. It claims that channels can reduce the need for time-consuming meetings, while still keeping everyone in the loop.

Enterprise features

Group video calls – Cliq’s group video calling feature, PrimeTime, removes the chaos of a normal group video call and lets people take turns speaking to the other video callers. Before they can speak to the group, participants must click on the “Request to speak” button, and the host must approve the request. PrimeTime also allows all participants to chat via text box during the video conference.

Audio and video calls – In addition to PrimeTime, Cliq also supports standard, one-on-one and group calls — both audio and video — which users can start right from their chat window. During the call, users can send texts or share files whether they are using the Cliq native or web application or one of the mobile apps.

AI-driven communications administration – Cliq delegates administrative tasks to Zoho Intelligent Assistant, Zia. So users can create event and meeting reminders in Cliq, and participants will get reminders before their meeting. However, Zia will create the group chat before the meeting, add all the participants, remind them before the meeting, ask them to share files, take notes, share minutes of the meeting, and archive the group chat for future reference.

Zoho and third-party integrations – Cliq works with most Zoho apps, fetching information from the other Zoho apps and letting users view it in their chat window. Additionally, Cliq is available as a chat tool inside other Zoho apps. Cliq also works with popular third-party apps including YouTube, Google Drive, Eventbrite, Crashlytics, and 20 other apps.

Animated emojis – As part of the Cliq launch, Zoho is rolling out nearly 100 new, animated emojis – Zomojis – that have been created exclusively for Cliq. The Zomojis take animated emojis to a new level with their vibrant color and rich detail.

For developers

Beyond its rich, out-of-the-box functionality, Cliq can be easily extended to support the unique collaboration demands of any organization. It offers a platform built with Zoho’s own scripting language, Deluge, which allows users to create Chat bots in Cliq and use them for automating internal processes.

Similarly, developers can create integrations for Cliq and publish them in the Zoho Marketplace and charge customers to use them. There will be no server requirements, and therefore no maintenance costs. Zoho also does not take any commission for promoting these integrations to customers.

The company is also open sourcing its library of Zomojis under the GPL v3 license, so the animated emojis can be freely integrated with third-party apps. Zomoji keyboards for iOS and Android will also be open sourced and published on Github.

“Developers can use the Cliq platform and integrate Cliq with any software that has an open API. It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to integrate. Once done, Cliq bots and commands fetch information for users when needed. For example, users can check traffic in their area with a traffic bot and Cliq gets you all the info you need,” added Vembu.

Zoho states that Cliq is available immediately as a web application; a native application for Mac, Windows and Linux; and mobile apps for iOS, Android and Windows Phone. In addition to the Free plan, Cliq is available in an Unlimited plan starting at INR 100 ($1.5 approx.) per user per month and decreases when the number of seats increases. Cliq is also included as part of Zoho One. Additionally, it will also be a part of Zoho’s Workplace, an integrated suite of productivity and collaboration apps.

The post Zoho unveils enterprise chat solution Cliq appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Earlier, business owners could claim or add their businesses using the Google My Business service, which is free of cost. They could add and update contact information, opening and closing hours, images of their offices, location data, among others. With this new dashboard, Google is aiming to simplify the process of making edits to a business profile.

How does it work?

According to the search giant, business owners have to first log into their business account, find their business on Google Search and they will be able to see a new, simple menu right above the search results. They can then click the edit button, and the fields that can be edited will be highlighted which will allow them to update their information and upload photos directly.

Business owners can:

• Add or correct business information, post updated hours
• Post on Google and stay engaged with their customers
• Share photos that make their business stand out
• See how many views the listing gets, and access detailed information about  the listing’s performance.
• Know when users upload photos of their business

The post Now business owners can edit their listings directly from Google Search appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Techseen: You say that telecom software professional service providers still need their classic systems to support their transformation. What are these classic systems? Why and how can they support digital transformation?

Kaftzan: Business Support Systems (BSS) have been supporting telecoms businesses for years. Systems such as billing, CRM and Ordering are still necessary for service providers but they have to evolve; from billing to real-time convergent charging and from CRM and Ordering to true omni-channel digital customer engagement systems. This evolution supports service provider transformation by enabling customers to add and adapt communications services from all areas of the telco landscape, on the fly and in real-time, and they allow customers to interact with their service provider on any channel through any mode of communication. This evolution of the BSS is critical to meet the needs of digital immediacy and empowerment that the digital customer demands.

Techseen: Does the utilization of classic systems reduce the cost of transformation for an enterprise? What are the transformation solutions that are being floated in the market currently that makes Amdocs stand out?

Kaftzan: The cost of a transformation will often be dependent on the starting point and end goal. Some service providers will look to improve one particular part of their business, say the retail store. Others will look to improve all of their customer engagement channels for an omno-channel, multi-modal experience and still others will go for a deep full business transformation that involves the transformation of all elements of the BSS, both back-end and customer facing. Amdocs customer who are using our systems which have been real-time and omni-convergent for years will find they are starting at a better point for transformation than others.

However we have made additional enhancements to our offering that lets the service provider succeed in their transformation strategy. This includes more openness and APIs in our backend systems, support for new business models and digital offerings like OTT and IoT, a digital platform for true multi-modal interaction, our aia intelligence platform which helps our customers bring intelligence to their processes and engagements and the flexibility and user controls that lets the digital customer take control of their experience.

Techseen: In the telecom industry, isn’t convergent billing already happening? Especially in enterprises where there is a need of transparency? How does it connect with digital transformation?

Kaftzan: The telecom industry has been moving towards convergent billing for many years now. The challenge is that as the industry moves towards that goal, the definitions of what convergent means in the context of charging and billing continues to evolve as the demands of the digital economy evolve. It began as a means to unify systems for prepaid and postpaid. It then evolved to mean convergence of lines of business into multi-play. Now it is evolving further and extending into new digital services such as OTT and IoT and a truly real-time experience for all customers over every touch point. A charging and billing system of the digital era cannot be said to be truly convergent if it cannot handle all of these new services on a unified system.

Ironically, many service providers’ BSS systems lag behind in the enterprise space as these customers relied on more customized products and offerings as well as more direct sales and account management.

That, coupled with the relatively low number of enterprise customers as opposed to consumer lead BSS for enterprise to continue to be very customized if not manual systems that could not keep up with the development of the consumer side of the house. Now, with service providers putting more focus on enterprise customers as their core consumer service becomes commoditized, they are seeing a need to provide the same digital and convergent experience to their enterprise customers. Amdocs has put a great deal of effort in helping service providers succeed in this area, in terms of modernizing the product offering capabilities, the Configure Price Quote process as well as ordering of complex enterprise products.

Techseen: Amdocs states that there is a reduction in the cost of ownership when service providers take up convergent billing. How?

Kaftzan: This is achieved through a number of factors. Firstly there is the potential for consolidation of systems, from disparate systems for prepaid, postpaid, wireless, wireline, TV, broadband and other digital services into a single unified system. Furthermore, modern digital monetization systems are run on newer technology that helps service providers keep costs down while increasing scale.

Amdocs Digital Monetization runs NO-SQL databases as opposed to traditional relational databases, which scale better at cost and reduce costly database license fees. A number of functions are run on open source technologies that further reduce capital expenditure. And of course operating on a cloud-enabled architecture reduces dependencies on physical machines and is in turn much more efficient.

Techseen: You also claim that your convergent charging and billing solution delivers real-time charging and scalability in a single carrier-grade system. What is currently lacking in the industry that it needs your solution?

Kaftzan: The key requirement for the industry is to be able to manage all of your revenue and customer processes on a unified system, rather than spate systems for each new service. Service providers are in a hurry to launch new products like IoT and OTT offerings that their current legacy systems cannot handle. That is the key challenge. And many service providers, in their rush to market, are tempted to simply add another system to handle the new services and worry about the convergence of the system into the overall customer experience later.

This solution quickly leads to duplication of processes, and is liable to cause missed revenue opportunities and a poor customer experience. Of course the best would be a convergent system that can already handle these new services, and enable service providers to launch and scale up a new line of business quickly and efficiently.

This is the advantage that Amdocs customers have; a single, real-time system that can handle all of the new services that the telecom industry needs and wants to deploy quickly, and is ready for rapid the rapid growth and high demands of digital consumption.

Techseen: Why do you think carriers are becoming more open to alternate delivery models? What are the challenges they are facing?

Kaftzan: Service providers are dealing with a digital economy that has severely diminished the growth in their core businesses. That has forced them to be more efficient. The digital economy is also filled with new players that are software based and agile in their development of products, and are free to reap the benefits of the major investments that telecoms make in networks and infrastructure. It is this need for efficiency and agility that service providers are looking for, and new delivery models -such as cloud and managed services – for their core systems serve both of those purposes.

Techseen: What are the challenges that Amdocs has faced to convince telecom enterprises to accede to your solution? Is there a gap in awareness/ education or as you state in your white paper, there a need of digital transformation first?

Kaftzan: Amdocs is in the enviable position of being a trusted advisor for the leading service providers in the world. And our customers are constantly challenging us to help them transform from communications service providers to digital service providers. They rely on us for best practices because after all of these years we are recognized as experts in telco BSS. Our Global customer base also gives us a perspective on the possibilities that our customers, who are experts in their local markets, appreciate and we bring that to bear in all of our engagements. But our customers are not waiting for us to tell them where to go.

They are leaders in the telecommunications market and have a vision for what they want to achieve. It is a true partnership that comes from the vision and imperative of the service provider and the global industry leadership of Amdocs that closes any gaps and enables us to drive the optimal digital transformation for each customer.

Furthermore, we realize that each communication service provider is different and has unique needs. Therefore, we need to adjust and accommodate different needs of our customers. For example, even the definition and focus of DSP- digital service provider, varies from one service provider to another. Some service providers or DSPs may focus on consumer experiences and channels, while others might focus on digital services and ecosystem. It means we need to provide different types of solutions, technologies, and services to each of the service providers.

Techseen: One of your biggest communications client is AT&T and recently after its ECOMP has merged with ONAP, reports state that Amdocs’ involvement has bolstered a lot. Which is the next use case for ONAP according to Amdocs?

Kaftzan: To test and verify new virtual services on the ONAP open source platform quickly and efficiently, Amdocs believes the critical next-step for service providers is easy deployment of ONAP through a cloud-based hosting environment that simplifies distribution of open source code. Open source brings unparalleled agility to the market, making it vital that open source contributions are packaged into a mature capability set to fast-track service innovation and extract full value from virtualized networks.

Techseen: What is the next big thing in the telecommunications industry according to Amdocs? Where do you see Amdocs playing a major role in future tech?

Kaftzan: It is difficult to predict the future, but looking ahead to the next couple years, it seems clear that the launch of 5G and the integration of Artificial Intelligence will have a major impact on the telecommunications industry in the near future. 5G is just a year or 2 away and it has the potential to change our lives and how we interact with the world of technology around us. With 5G providing connectivity to billions of devices we will learn what truly ubiquitous connectivity is about.

The telecommunications industry is at the center of that game changing technology and it must do whatever it can to leverage its place in the value chain to maximize opportunities in the digital economy. Amdocs customers are at the forefront of 5G development and as such we must be ready to help them succeed in doing just that.

All of this connectivity creates a need to move past automation to intelligence. Intelligent operations, as well as intelligent interactions with customers. Service providers will need to leverage intelligence in this hyper-connected world in order to not only serve their customers, but delight their customers.

The post 5G & AI integration to have major impact on telecom in future: Jonathan Kaftzan, Amdocs appeared first on TECHSEEN.

In January 2016, Alice had received $9.5 million in Series A funding led by Expedia. The latest round makes Expedia a majority shareholder in Alice and deepens the commercial cooperation between the two companies that was originally established with an equity investment in 2015.

“Our mission is to give hoteliers the ability to provide the best guest service and experience they can around the clock, and this latest round is a testament to the hard work of everyone involved. With this additional capital, we’ll be better equipped to help hoteliers reach their goals of improved guest service,” said Justin Effron, Chief Executive Officer, Alice.

Alice focuses on enhancing digital consumer experiences by refining the guest experience head-on, and by studying not only how the internal business of a hotel runs, but also how services are delivered today in other analogous industries. This funding allows the startup to build out its development, product, sales, and customer success teams to help the company to reach its goal of being one of the hotel industry’s leading operating platforms.

“It is time for the internet to expand beyond revolutionizing how our hotel partners market and distribute their products into how they service and interact with their guests,” says Cyril Ranque, President, Lodging Partner Services, Expedia.

“Alice is developing smart mobile and cloud technology to fundamentally improve the hotelier and guest experience at scale. That’s a revolution worth investing in,” Ranque added.

Earlier this year, ALICE launched products including the Guest Profile, which gives hoteliers a view into the guest experience across every aspect of their hotel stay, including check-in, requests for amenities and services, and any interaction with the concierge. This includes Guest Text Messaging, which facilitates text messaging between hotels and guests without requiring an app download, as well as Logbooks, which can be used by hoteliers to track any physical item belonging to or loaned to a guest, including packages and lost & found.

Additionally, the company launched a Preventative Maintenance tool and an open-API, and is looking forward to releasing new features for use by hoteliers such as Checklists, a tool to improve task management, SMS automation, which automates responses via text to common guest questions, and more.

The post Expedia pumps in another $26M in hospitality platform Alice appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Cortana users will be able to have Alexa shop on Amazon.com and manage their Amazon orders and access many of Alexa’s third-party skills by asking Cortana to open Alexa, just as Alexa users will have access to Cortana’s productivity features such as calendar management, day at a glance and location-based reminders simply by asking Alexa to open Cortana.

What is interesting to see here is that both the voice assistants work differently. While Cortana is leaned more towards business and productivity, Alexa on the other hand is more consumer and lifestyle focused. The cross-platform integration will allow Alexa to access Cortana’s features, which are directly built into Microsoft’s Office products.

“Ensuring Cortana is available for our customers everywhere and across any device is a key priority for us. Bringing Cortana’s knowledge, Office 365 integration, commitments, and reminders to Alexa is a great step toward that goal,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft.

“The world is big and so multifaceted. There are going to be multiple successful intelligent agents, each with access to different sets of data and with different specialized skill areas. Together, their strengths will complement each other and provide customers with a richer and even more helpful experience. It’s great for Echo owners to get easy access to Cortana,” said Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO, Amazon.

In an official blog, Andrew Shuman, Corporate Vice President, Cortana Engineering, Microsoft states that by bringing Cortana to Alexa and Alexa to Cortana, the company is trying to add more value and choice for consumers and developers alike.

According to several news reports, the news comes just as Microsoft is preparing to launch its Cortana speaker in collaboration with Harman Kardon. Once that is out in the market, customers will have to chose between Microsoft and Amazon devices, or at least when it comes to smart speakers.

The post Amazon, Microsoft tie up: Alexa and Cortana to be buddies appeared first on TECHSEEN.

According to the survey of 6,000 consumers across six countries, nearly 70% of respondents are open to AI solutions assisting them in their daily life – for example, to save them time or money – and nearly 40% expect Artificial Intelligence to improve customer service in the future. But despite this potential, the report indicates that current AI experiences are falling short of consumers’ expectations, presenting an opportunity for companies to set themselves apart. Around 38% consumers said they don’t think AI delivers the same or better service than humans can today.

The survey identified three core areas that businesses need to address to help make AI a customer experience differentiator:

Bringing a more human-like touch

The study revealed a significant preference for human interaction over AI-powered experiences for customer service – making it imperative for businesses to better humanize their AI or supplement it with live agents. The most popular method to get help remains calling a human service agent (45 percent) – beating online chat (20 percent), social media (3 percent), or going into a store (15 percent).

When consumers do turn to online channels, nearly 80% want to chat with a real person, not with a machine. This sentiment was shared across all age groups, even with younger or digital native respondents.

Increasing transparency

88% of consumers demand businesses be transparent about how and when they deploy automated bots. To earn increased trust, the study suggests that businesses will need to be more open about where AI is currently being used while also showcasing how it improves the customer experience.

Ensuring data privacy

While a majority of consumers said they are open to using AI, only 27% are willing to give over their personal data to get better customer service. This presents a significant obstacle for organizations that need a steady stream of data to continuously learn and improve their AI systems. Businesses must continue to find ways to ensure data privacy to help customers be more comfortable with sharing information so they can experience the value of AI.

The survey also uncovered which industries consumers trust most using AI to interact with them. Retail topped the list with 34% of respondents saying they feel comfortable using AI in online retail situations for personalized product recommendations. 27% are open to a doctor using AI to help make a better diagnosis or recommendation about their health treatment. Consumers were least likely to trust the government, with only 10% open to it using AI.

The report surveyed consumers across the US, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Australia.

“AI is the future of customer experience but it is currently at a crossroads. Companies need to ensure their AI strategy is not treated as a novelty but rather is leveraged to dramatically change the way they engage with their customers at every touchpoint. As this study suggests, the promise of AI is there for the taking, but it’s now up to businesses to seize the moment,” said Don Schuerman, CTO and VP, Product Marketing, Pegasystems.

The post Nearly 70% consumers are afraid of AI: Pegasystems report appeared first on TECHSEEN.

Google claims that the speech recognition will also support ancient languages such as Georgian (first spoken in 430AD approx.), and also adding Swahili and Amharic, which are two of Africa’s largest languages. It will also be adding many Indian languages such as Gujarati, Tamil, Bengali among others, in a bid to make the internet more inclusive.

Interestingly Google states that it went a step further for the language integrations by working with native speakers for collecting speech samples, asking them to read common phrases.

“This process trained our machine learning models to understand the sounds and words of the new languages and to improve their accuracy when exposed to more examples over time,” said Daan van Esch, Technical Program Manager, Speech, Google.

Apart from this update the company has also introduced voice dictation for emojis in US English. Now people in the US speaking English can say “smile faced emoji” instead of typing the symbol or selecting the emoji from the repository. The company states that it will be bringing this to more languages and locations soon.

Looking at the enterprise side of the update, Google Cloud Speech API was launched in beta last year to improve speech recognition for everything from voice-activated commands to call center routing to data analytics. After getting feedback that consumers want more functionality and control, the company has announced features that expand support for long-form audio and extension for language support to help customers inject AI into their businesses.

Another feature that Google has provided is word-level timestamps – which lets the user jump to the moment in the audio where the text was spoken, or display the relevant text while the audio is playing – time offsets (timestamps) are useful for analyzing longer audio files, where the user may need to search for a particular word in the recognized text and locate it in the original audio.

Talking about longer audio, Google has also increased the length of supported audio files from 80 minutes to up-to 3 hours. Additionally, the files that are longer than 3 hours could be supported on a case-by-case basis by applying for a quota extension through Cloud Support, states the company.

The post Google Cloud Speech API now supports 30 more languages appeared first on TECHSEEN.

The Automotive Edge Computing Consortium will develop an ecosystem for connected cars to support emerging services such as intelligent driving and transport, creating of maps with real-time data as well as driving assistance based on cloud computing.

Joining Toyota InfoTechnology Center and Toyota Motor Corporation are auto manufactirer, DENSO Corporation, telecommunications company, Ericsson, semiconductor manufacturer, Intel Corporation, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation DOCOMO.

The vehicle manufacturer estimates that the data volume between vehicles and the cloud will reach 10 exabytes (10.7 billion Gigabytes) per month till the year 2025, which is approximately 10,000 times larger than the present volume.

According to the consortium, with the increase in data volume, there will be a need for new architectures of network and computing infrastructure to support distributed resources and topology-aware storage capacity. The body will be working towards making the architectures compliant with the applicable standards to include local and global collaboration.

Using edge computing and network design, the consortium claims to focus on increasing network capacity to accommodate automotive big data in a reasonable fashion between vehicles and the cloud.

It will define requirements and develop use cases for emerging mobile devices with a particular focus on the automotive industry, bringing them to standards bodies, industry consortiums and solution providers.

The consortium claims that it will also encourage the development of best practices for the distributed and layered computing approach, which has been recommended by the members, and in the next few months initiate activities to invite relevant global technology leaders and expand the consortium.

Interestingly, apart from kick-starting the consortium, Toyota has also made an investment of $96 million to Preferred Networks for accelerating a joint research and development of AI technology in the mobility field including autonomous driving. In May this year, Toyota Research Institute along with MIT’s Media Lab and a few partners to see how blockchain technology can be applied to the car industry and how people can become comfortable with autonomous technologies.

The post Toyota & tech heavy-hitters kick-start Automotive Edge Computing Consortium appeared first on TECHSEEN.