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back to article Hey Alexa, Siri and Cortana: Cisco says you’re bad at business

Cisco will shortly give the world a voice assistant it believes has a shot at making life uncomfortable for Siri, Cortana and Alexa in the office. The company’s effort won’t be a general-purpose bot. Instead the company plans to make it a part of its Spark collaboration portfolio and have it do things like place calls, find …

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  1. A Non e-mouse Silver badge

    Apple tie up

    Trollope also mentioned that Cisco's partnership with Apple could see Spark and Siri strike up a conversation

    I don't know what Cisco & Apple have gotten up to in private, but in public I don't see anything that's actually come out of this (in)famous partnership.

    1 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: Apple tie up

      Apple come up with an idea (that someone else did 1st) and Cisco go me too?

      0 0 Reply
  2. yoganmahew

    Dying Spark

    Has anyone actually made Spark do anything useful? Other than persistent team chat. While it's better than Jabber (what isn't?), getting Spark to do useful things like, fonts (without having to playaround with markup), embedded pictures, whiteboard shapes, really anything beyond the most basic interactions seems impossible.

    Oh wait, maybe I'm holding it wrong :|

    2 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Dying Spark

      Perhaps you should redefine your idea of what is useful! Paint is a more suitable app for your needs!

      1 0 Reply
  3. 0laf
    WTF?

    Will it do anything in a crowded open plan office faster and more accurately than I can already do it with a keyboard and mouse?

    I still don't get voice assistants full stop? Still too inaccurate, too slow and too much of a PITA.

    The only appealing use case I've got (for a fully able and computer literate person) is to divert my son's endless questions. Even then I'd only want to delegate that when I was genuinely too busy.

    2 0 Reply
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Will it do anything in a crowded open plan office faster and more accurately than I can already do it with a keyboard and mouse?

      Get you killed by your co-workers.

      5 0 Reply
  4. honestcollabguy

    When will they do it?

    Rowan has outlined the capabilities and the rough timelines of when different capabilities will be available in this blog post. You can see that beyond stage 2, Cisco's proposition in massively differentiated.

    https://chatbotsmagazine.com/the-5-levels-of-meeting-ai-b60187e51409

    0 0 Reply
  5. mix

    Late to a party that didn't happen?

    Me too, me too shout Cisco, except it's different for the bit the others didn't think about, that no-one wants anyway...Mention AI that'll get the CIO wallets out...

    0 0 Reply
  6. Adrian Montagu

    Security

    I find the whole business of voice command technology quite frightening. You are putting a device into your home / business that is listening to your every word. Think about it!

    0 0 Reply

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