Videoconferencing giant Zoom will team up with AI startup Anthropic to bring AI features into its products, starting with its Contact Center product line. Credit: Mentimeter, Laxis, Pexels, Aternity, Domo, Lucid, Grain, Ivelum, CLIPr Zoom is entering into a strategic partnership with Anthropic that calls for the latter company’s generative AI model to be integrated into Zoom’s Contact Center portfolio. In an announcement on Tuesday, Zoom also stated that the company had made an investment in Anthropic as part of the collaboration, but did not disclose the amount or terms. Anthropic also has backing from Google’s parent company, Alphabet, and its flagship AI, dubbed Claude, has been described as a chief rival to ChatGPT. Claude is what Anthropic calls a “constitutional AI” model, meaning that it uses its own AI to track values like “nontoxicity” and “helpfulness” in an effort to avoid AI hallucination — the tendency for generative AI to sometimes make things up — and the use of AI to perform harmful acts. A two-step process provides for, first, an iterative self-critique and tamping down of potentially harmful responses to queries, followed by AI evaluation designed to train a preference model so that Claude can identify better and less harmful responses. The idea, according to Zoom’s announcement, is to let AI assist call center workers in understanding a given caller’s intent. The system should be able to surface helpful information quickly, and provide insights that can be used to help train call center workers. A planned feature will also use AI to offer those workers resources based on caller requests. Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim said that the AI is a key part of the company’s strategy for creating more helpful interactions between call center staff and customers. “With Claude guiding agents toward trustworthy resolutions and powering self-service for end-users, companies will be able to take customer relationships to another level,” she said in the company announcement. “Partnering with Anthropic also furthers our commitment to providing customers with our federated approach to AI, optimized to deliver outstanding customer experience outcomes.” Zoom’s in-house AI models are another part of that federated approach, which the company said offers users different options for different applications. Additionally, the new Contact Center AI functionality can incorporate AI models from customers themselves, offering an additional layer of flexibility. Anthropic has also made inroads with other AI partners, most notably DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine. DuckDuckGo announced in March that it would integrate Claude into its DuckAssist feature — which also utilizes OpenAI’s Davinci model. Related content news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills opinion Why you’ll soon have a digital clone of your own AI isn’t going to replace you at work. You will. By Mike Elgan May 02, 2024 7 mins Augmented Reality Generative AI Virtual Reality news analysis Workers with these AI skills are getting cash premiums As AI deployments become more critical to digital transformation projects, organizations are struggling to find skilled workers to support the new technology, so they're paying premiums for prospective hires or current employees who obtain the n By Lucas Mearian May 01, 2024 7 mins Generative AI IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe