Chhavideep Singh
Source: Zoom Blog
Zoom, the video conferencing platform that became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic is now the default favorite application for anyone who wants to video call with friends, family and conduct official conferences. The communications company has grown in revenue since it first launched in 2011 and the COVID-induced lockdowns accelerated Zoom’s popularity very quickly.
As the California-based communications platform is growing, it is starting to make some major innovations and acquisitions in the industry that will help keep the platform relevant even after the COVID-19 pandemic ends. As offices and schools start to re-open after the Coronavirus outbreak, it is very important for Zoom to retain its users as the work-from-home culture is here to stay and major companies around the world are even considering a hybrid work mode for the future.
Having said that, Zoom has recently acquired a real-time Machine Translation solutions company, Kites which is short for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions. This seems like a vital acquisition for Zoom because Kites is working on the Artificial Intelligence technology that can communicate with people who speak different languages easier and also, Zoom is looking forward to adding translation capabilities to its video-conferencing application, as mentioned in a report by The Verge.
Founded back in 2015, Kites is a start-up dedicated to developing real-time Machine Translation solutions that help in breaking down language barriers and making seamless cross-language interactions in everyday life with peers, colleagues, or anyone who speaks a different language. As mentioned in a report by The Verge, Kites was first developed to work as in-classroom translation to help students who need help understanding the native language that their faculties are teaching in.
With Kites’ technology of real-time Machine Translations, users will be able to understand people who are speaking in a different language very easily. This platform is developed to minimize that language barrier and it can help students to learn new things online without worrying about it being in native English or German or any other language. Businessmen can use this technology to correspond with international dealers and entrepreneurs with clear communication and proper understand without having to keep a human translator to help them.
All of this technology will soon be coming to your favorite video conferencing platform, Zoom. Although, it already supports real-time transcriptions but it is only limited to people who are communicating in English. However, as mentioned in a report by The Verge, the company clears it out on their support page that Zoom’s real-time transcription feature may not be 100% accurate, and thus, the company is planning to establish a research center for the Kites team in Germany where they can develop this future technology for Zoom.