From the latest Conversational AI Gartner Magic Quadrant to some fresh Genesys research on customer loyalty, here are extracts from this week’s most popular news stories.
Gartner Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms 2026: The Rundown
Gartner has published its 2026 Magic Quadrant for Conversational AI Platforms, and the market looks considerably different from a year ago.
Two new vendors have entered the quadrant – Salesforce and Netomi – with both landing in strong positions on debut.
Several others have shifted, sometimes dramatically: SoundHound AI has climbed from Visionary to Leader; Boost.ai, which sat in the Leaders quadrant just twelve months ago, has dropped to Challenger; and Cognigy, now rebranded as NiCE Cognigy following its acquisition, has fallen from Leader to Visionary.
LivePerson, meanwhile, has been removed from the report entirely.
That is a lot of movement for a single year. It reflects, more than anything, the continued disruption that generative and agentic AI is causing in a market still working out what maturity actually looks like.
Click here to discover the full list of Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries, and Niche Players.
Genesys Report Reveals CX Loyalty Is Now At Make-or-Break
Genesys has today released its 2026 State of CX report, revealing that overall customer patience has collapsed amid rising AI-enabled service expectations.
Today, 92% of consumers expect every organization to deliver experiences as good as the best they have ever had, and 91% agree that a company is only as good as its customer service.
With CX becoming a make-or-break loyalty driver, it’s clear that automating the journey is not enough to keep customers interested.
Janelle Binder, Senior Vice President of Customer Advocacy and Engagement at Genesys, highlighted how rising expectations are forcing organizations to rethink their customer engagement strategies, with AI playing a central role in reshaping service delivery.
“Consumers no longer compare brands to direct competitors — they compare every interaction to the best experience they’ve ever had,” she said.
“As agentic AI reshapes engagement, organizations must focus on outcomes, not just automation. Success will depend on connecting AI, human expertise and customer context to deliver faster, more personalized service.”
Sprinklr Expands AI Capabilities to Shrink the CX Action Gap
Sprinklr has released new AI capabilities to turn customer insights into action across marketing, service, social, and voice channels.
It’s Summer ’26 Release offers various insights and support by integrating vendor tools such as Microsoft Teams and Adobe Customer Journey Analytics.
For CX leaders, Sprinklr’s broader goal to reduce the gap between knowing what customers are saying and acting on it will enable teams to act more quickly on decisions to offer more connected, consistent experiences at scale.
Karthik Suri, Chief Product and Corporate Strategy Officer at Sprinklr, said the Summer ’26 Release is designed to help organizations identify the most important customer signals for faster, AI-assisted action across CX.
“The challenge today isn’t collecting data, it’s knowing what matters and acting on it quickly,” he said.
“With this release, we’re helping organizations move from signals to decisions and from conversations to resolutions by combining agentic AI for autonomous resolutions with copilot support for human-assisted ones.”
“This helps enable brands to act in real time, while staying in control where it matters most.”
IBM and Red Hat Move Project Lightwell to Commercial Launch, Warning AI Security Risks are a “Wake Up Call” for CX Leaders
When Red Hat and IBM first introduced Project Lightwell in late May, it was framed as a response to a fast-changing AI security landscape. Just weeks later, the initiative has moved from concept to commercial availability, a rapid expansion that reflects how quickly frontier AI risks are reshaping enterprise security priorities.
The initiative, which the companies announced on May 28, was launched commercially on July 8 and has early customers using the service.
Brian Gracely, Senior Director of Portfolio Strategy at Red Hat, told CX Today in an interview that the pace is not accidental. As AI accelerates software development and threat activity, security programs that once evolved over quarters or years now need to move in weeks.
“The service has moved very quickly,” Gracely said. “We’ve gotten a lot of really good input from the market in terms of the nuances of how content is handled, how embargoes work.”
For enterprises, and particularly for customer experience leaders increasingly responsible for AI-powered customer journeys, the launch is a signal that security can no longer sit at the edge of digital transformation.
As AI becomes embedded in contact centers, self-service, automation, analytics and customer data environments, the risk profile around CX technology is expanding just as quickly (Read on…).
