From a big new addition to a prominent AI assistant to a controversial possible update to ChatGPT, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Zoom’s New-Look AI Companion Reveals Its Broader Ambitions
Zoom has unveiled its new-look AI companion, announcing a series of innovations to boost its agentic capabilities.
Chief among these is a fresh Custom AI Companion add-on that enables users of Zoom’s AI assistant to connect directly with 16 third-party apps, including ServiceNow and Salesforce.
However, this isn’t just a case of standard integration.
Instead, these connectors allow users to trigger actions in these third-party applications, via the AI Companion, without leaving Zoom.
As such, Zoom reduces the need to switch between applications when running activities like updating customer cases, revising projects, and completing onboarding activities.
The enterprise communications stalwart believes the revamped agentic AI tool will help users “maximize efficiency”.
Yet, the move also signals Zoom’s broader ambitions to position its communications platform as an organization’s operational center point. (Read on…).
OpenAI Ponders Adverts on ChatGPT as It Bids to Reimagine Commerce Experiences
Last month, the OpenAI Podcast launched, with the first episode featuring CEO Sam Altman.
During the conversation, host Andrew Mayne quizzed Altman over the potential for OpenAI to insert advertising into the much-loved AI model.
Many have touted the move, with the company projected to burn through $26BN and accumulate $14.4BN in losses this year, per the New York Times.
Addressing the speculation, Altman claimed he’s “not totally against” the idea. Yet, they aren’t sure what an advertising product would look like.
“I can point to areas where I like ads,” said the CEO. “I think ads on Instagram are kind of cool [and] I’ve bought a bunch of stuff from them. But I think it would be very hard to get it right; it would take a lot of care.”
Altman then underscored the high degree of trust in the independence of ChatGPT’s outputs, and appeared unwilling to break that.
Indeed, the OpenAI head honcho believes faith in web search has fallen, as with social media, because “you can tell you’re being monetized.” (Read on…).
Salesforce Finally Gets Unified Contact Center Routing Right, Thanks to AWS
The Salesforce Omni-Channel engine is a unified routing solution that directs incoming customer interactions to support reps across contact center channels.
However, until recently, it had a glaring gap: voice.
As such, many businesses route calls in the telephony system and digital contacts through the Salesforce Omni-Channel engine.
Not only does that make routing configurations more fiddly, but it makes channel blending across digital and voice difficult.
Thankfully, Salesforce now promises that Service Cloud can route to all channels via its Omni-Channel engine, voice included.
In doing so, it enables smoother work distribution, skill-based and direct-to-agent routing for the channel, alongside centralized configuration.
However, there is a catch: it’s only available to contact centers using Service Cloud together with Amazon Connect, with AWS supporting the behind-the-scenes. (Read on…).
Sanas Files a Lawsuit Against Krisp, Claims “Theft of Intellectual Property”
Sanas filed a lawsuit against Krisp, claiming the company created a “copycat” version of its Sanas AI Accent Translation technology.
In the lawsuit, Sanas takes aim at the Krisp AI Accent Conversion solution released in April 2025, noting:
The similarity is not random chance. Krisp did not come up with what it claims is its own, “new” accent translation software—Krisp stole it from Sanas.
As the names of both solutions suggest, the AI technology, which this case revolves around, involves altering accents in real-time.
As of 2024, Sanas worked with 12 of the top 20 customer service BPOs, deploying its software amongst their global contact center agent populations.
Yet, despite launching little more than three months ago, Krisp has already scooped one of Sanas’ biggest customers: Everise, which employs 28k+ agents.
Given Krisp’s market penetration with background noise removal technology, it could attract many more big customers.
However, amid this rising competition, Sanas is claiming foul play. (Read on…).
