The Zoom announced the acquisition of a company that can help with real-time translation using artificial intelligence, which is great news for enabling conversations between people who speak different languages. The company has been rolling out updates to make video conferencing more convenient, with the option of conversation transcription, more creative, with the drawing resource, and also inclusive, with the sharing of preferred pronouns, and all these initiatives are commendable.

Alongside some rivals, Zoom is one of the most used apps during the pandemic for meetings and classes in times of home office. The platform, which has been competing for audience with Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and others, is now turning its efforts to real-time translation. To this end, Zoom acquired Kites (Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions), a company based in Germany and owner of simultaneous translation tools with the help of artificial intelligence.

The company makes no secret of the fact that this purchase is intended to improve communication between users of different languages, and having an artificial intelligence tool focused on this objective makes the plans a reality. The transcription, available only in English for now, is useful for those who speak the British language to review classes, meetings, and other things — but the translation could improve the accessibility of the service and make different languages ​​less of a barrier to the communication environment.

Competing in the market with Meet and Teams

Initially developing AI services for translating English and German classes, Kites will continue to operate in Germany, and Zoom is considering opening a research center there as well — to integrate teams. There are no plans for a real-time AI translation function on the platform.

It is worth remembering that Google Meet is another service that sought enable transcriptions in your tool. Microsoft Teams is being revamped to take on the appearance of a personal messenger and will even be integrated into Windows 11. Zoom's new investment comes to maintain the company's commitment to this “war” for the consumer — something that Instagram, Twitter, and others are doing with the voice chat popularized by Clubhouse.

Through which channels you reach those people, classic and out of the box. The Verge

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