Welcome to the Meeting, Alexa

Get ready to make room for Siri, Alexa, Cortana or Google at your conference room table. AI is about to head to the office.

Already these “voice assistants” are learning to recognize different voices within one conversation, and respond accordingly. When you ask Google Home about your calendar it will know to reply about the events on your calendar and not your wife’s calendar. Likewise when your wife queries Google home, it will respond using her data.

Imagine what this could mean in the office. If you could include a voice assistant in your videoconferences and meetings, then each participant could use the voice assistant to interact with their own calendar, email, and task list as the meeting progressed.

Imagine that Mary, Jane, Bob, and Steve are all on the same video call. Instead of fumbling around with calendars and availability times to schedule the next meeting, one of them could just say “OK Google, when is the next time that the four of us can meet for 30 minutes?” Or “Alexa, when is Bill Jones available to meet with the four of us?” The voice assistant would respond with dates and times, from which you could pick. And when you do pick a time, the meeting would be added to the calendar for Bill Jones and everyone at the current meeting.