While some vendors are working to ensure large language models become better at reasoning, other AI vendors are making them compatible in multiple languages.

Writer is a provider of a full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises.

While the vendor provides a generative AI platform that enterprises can use to build generative AI capabilities into their workflows, it also offers a family of LLMs: Palmyra. The models support text generation and translation in numerous languages, including Spanish, French, Hindi and Russian.

"Multilingual training data and models that can be as good in dozens of other languages as they are in English is something everybody should strive for," said Writer cofounder and CEO May Habib on a recent episode of Informa TechTarget's Targeting AI Podcast. Writer also uses large volumes of synthetic data to help build legal confidence in generative AI technology, Habib said.

Writer also publishes data on how its models score for bias and toxicity.

"We really want to make sure that we are compliant with folks' ESG [equity, sustainability and governance] guardrails and guidelines," Habib said.

Writer recently raised $200 million in series C funding, bringing its valuation to $1.9 billion.

Esther Shittu is a TechTarget Editorial news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems.

The contact center world is a difficult place, packed with frustration and stress.

Digital communications giant Cisco sees its mission as easing that experience for human contact center workers and the customers they deal with every day.

For that undertaking, the vendor has seized on generative AI and agentic AI as the vehicles to both automate and augment the work of humans, in essence, smartening up the traditional chatbots that have long helped companies interact with their customers.

"We're to see a lot more of what I call event-based communication, proactive communication outbound that we do particularly well, powered by AI," said Jay Patel, senior vice president and general manager for customer experience at Cisco Webex, on the Targeting AI podcast from Informa TechTarget. "And then the response path to that is we think there will be AI agents involved in some of the more simple use cases.

"For example, if you haven't paid a bill, they can obviously call you in the outbound call center, but probably a better way of doing it is probably to send you a message with a link to then basically make the payment," Patel continued.

Like many other big tech vendors, Cisco deploys large language models (LLMs) from a variety of specialist vendors, including OpenAI and Microsoft. It also uses open models from independent generative AI vendor Mistral, as well as its own AI technology developed in-house or acquired by acquisition.

"Fundamentally, what we are looking at is the idea of an AI engine for each use case, and within the AI engine you would have a particular LLM," Patel said.

Among the generative AI-powered tools Cisco has assembled are Webex AI Assistant and Agent Wellness, to tend to the psyches of busy contact center human workers.

"Customers call very frustrated; they may shout at somebody. And then if you've had a difficult call, the agent wellness feature will mean that the supervisor knows that this set of agents has had a set of difficult calls," Patel said. "Maybe they're the ones who need a break now. So, there are ways of improving employee experience inside the contact center that we think we can … use AI for."

Shaun Sutner is senior news director for Informa TechTarget's information management team, driving coverage of artificial intelligence, unified communications, analytics and data management technologies. He is a veteran journalist with more than 35 years of news experience. Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems. Together, they host the Targeting AI podcast.

Box has been in the AI game for a long time.

But when generative AI mushroomed into a transformative force in the tech world, the cloud content management vendor opted to turn to specialists in the new and fast-growing technology to power the arsenal of tools in its platform.

"We've been doing AI for many years. But the really cool thing that happened … AI got to the point where the generative AI models understood content," said Ben Kus, CTO at Box, on the Targeting AI podcast from Informa TechTarget. "For us, this whole generative AI revolution has been this great gift to everybody who deals with content. It's almost like having a very dedicated, very intelligent person who stands next to you, ready to do what you want."

When generative AI exploded with OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in November 2022, Box turned to OpenAI for its first batch of generative AI tools. Box CEO Aaron Levie had known OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman for many years.

However, when a passel of other independent generative AI vendors sprang up and the tech giants started releasing their own powerful large language models (LLMs) and multimodal models, Box decided to broaden its generative AI palette.

"Azure and OpenAI are partners of ours and we think they have great models, but we are not at all dedicated to any one model," Kus said. "In fact, at Box, one of our goals is to provide you with all of the major models that you might want."

These include generative AI models from Google, IBM, Anthropic and Amazon.

One example of how Box uses an outside model is Anthropic's 3.5 Sonnet LLM, which Kus called "one of the best models out there right now."

One application is at a financial firm that deals with long bond offerings. The company needs to analyze many of these complex financial vehicles to evaluate which bonds in which it wants to invest.

"They use [the model] to extract key info. It takes the [job] of looking through these bonds. From hours or days to … hopefully, minutes," Kus said. "If the model is very good, it can give you very good answers. If it's not as smart, then it can be off a little bit. So, this particular company really wants to have the best models so they can get the best sort of use of this kind of AI."

Shaun Sutner is senior news director for Informa TechTarget's information management team, driving coverage of artificial intelligence, unified communications, analytics and data management technologies. He is a veteran journalist with more than 30 years of news experience. Esther Shittu is an Informa TechTarget news writer and podcast host covering artificial intelligence software and systems.