Pathlight Conversational Intelligence" combines the depth and nuance of human analysis with the scale and speed of today's most powerful large language models

 Pathlight today unveiled Pathlight Conversation Intelligence (CI), introducing a new paradigm in AI-based customer interaction analysis. Leveraging the most sophisticated language models available, organizations can, for the first time, perform human-level analysis at scale—maximizing quality and depth of customer insight. Pathlight CI represents a major technology leap in the application of AI to the field of conversational analysis, surpassing the superficial limitations of legacy solutions.

"The most critical business insights and customer issues originate from daily interactions, yet most organizations have visibility into less than five percent of conversations," said Alex Kvamme, CEO, Pathlight. "The bottom line is that you can't fix what you can't see. Not only that, but you can't truly understand a customer's needs and future pain points unless you're able to deeply understand what they are saying. Pathlight CI closes this information gap by enabling customer-facing teams to uncover and address issues quickly, and giving them unparalleled insights into emerging trends."

Kvamme added, "Most non-AI-native conversational analysis tools in the market pick up bits and pieces of customer interactions, but words and tags fail to answer a fundamental question: why are my customers calling in the first place, and what do they need from us to make their experience better? We designed Pathlight CI to go above and beyond these superficial insights and extract the full picture of what the customer needs. Until Pathlight CI, we had barely scratched the surface of what's possible."

Pathlight CI: Generative AI Provides Human-Level Conversation Analysis

Traditional conversation analysis remains incredibly limited. Today, the process is either managed manually by Quality Assurance (QA) analysts that can't cover the full spectrum of conversations, or by a lightweight AI model that can analyze at scale but lacks deep insight. The common thread between both options is they are expensive and lack depth and scale.

Pathlight CI harnesses the latest in large language model technology, combining the depth and nuance of human analysis with the scale and speed of machine learning. Leveraging transfer learning and transformer architecture, as well as multiple LLMs, the new solution deciphers nuances in language and context far beyond the reach of traditional ML solutions, delivering a level of analysis previously unattainable.

The foundation of Pathlight CI is powered by a multi-LLM backend that uniquely leverages both public and privately hosted models. This architecture ensures each analysis job is matched with the ideal model, optimizing precision and efficiency, while also circumventing issues around context window limitations and rate limits. As a result, Pathlight is able to deliver human-level analysis with the speed and scalability of AI, revolutionizing the field of conversational analysis.

Pathlight CI: Customer Benefits 

With Pathlight CI, organizations can:

• Capture every conversation across every channel with AI, no training required: Capture, transcribe, tag, and categorize every customer conversation across every channel using Pathlight's data pipelines and language models. Summarize, classify contact drivers/intent, detect resolutions, ask custom questions, and score agent performance across millions of conversations.
• Uncover insights and track trends in real-time: Gain full insight into customer interactions across all channels, allowing you to identify trends, seize opportunities, and mitigate risks for a comprehensive understanding of your business. Capitalize on opportunities in a timely manner and make informed decisions based on data, rather than relying on instincts.
• Deliver personalized guidance when needed: Deliver targeted, detailed feedback. Focus on the parts of each conversation that need attention. Build custom scorecards, view interactions side-by-side, and annotate specific phrases to deliver targeted feedback.
• Answer complex, high-stakes customer questions: Pathlight CI delivers a nuanced view into the deeper layers of customer interactions. Uncover critical questions around customer issues and concerns beyond the surface-level inquiries. This deep-level analysis, unattainable through traditional methods, allows businesses to comprehensively understand their customers' needs and priorities, thereby enhancing their capacity to deliver exceptional service.

The entertainment industry's first AI assistant that tells users whether they should watch a show or movie

Reelgood, the all-in-one streaming platform, announces the debut of Cue, the entertainment industry's first AI assistant to help users figure out what to watch.

Cue is an AI assistant that has an in-depth understanding of people's nuanced tastes and will tell users whether or not they should watch a movie or show.

This revolutionary personalization is possible thanks to Reelgood's sophisticated data platform and machine learning algorithms, which enable Cue to analyze what a user has watched, loved, liked, and disliked, then match that against billions of data points on the entertainment preferences of over 100 million users.

Cue is a powerful discovery tool for Reelgood users who rely on the platform as their default daily interface for streaming entertainment. Given that the average American spends 3.1 hours per day streaming video and 78% of all US households subscribe to more than one streaming service, Cue is a revolutionary way for users to maximize their entertainment time.

"You'll be surprised to see that Cue often understands your tastes even better than you do," says Reelgood founder and CEO David Sanderson.

Quad ensures your marketing machine runs as frictionless as possible.

Quad/Graphics, Inc. a global marketing experience (MX) company, is rolling out “Built on Quad.” This new campaign showcases Quad’s latest brand identity and marks the company’s first large-scale marketing and advertising effort in its 52-year history. Quad’s new brand campaign will run through digital, OOH, print, events, experiential, direct mail, sponsorship and sales assets. It will also be showcased at the 2023 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity, including the Nice Côte d'Azur Airport.

Quad provides end-to-end marketing solutions that removes friction wherever it occurs in the marketing journey for more than 2,900 clients, including Sirius XM, Amazon, the Albertsons Companies, and other major brands. The "Built on Quad” campaign focuses on the company’s strength as a one-stop partner for the modern marketer, and it also pays homage to its roots as one of the largest and most successful commercial printers in North America. The company prints and mails more than 8 billion pieces per year.

“In 2006, when I succeeded my father, I wanted to build on what he started and grow it into something unparalleled for the marketplace,” said Joel Quadracci, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Quad. “Today, we are meeting that moment. We’re renowned for our work in printing and direct mail, but those only represent a fraction of our capabilities. Our new story and brand expression encompasses everything that we are and marks an exciting juncture for the company’s evolution. We’re thrilled to introduce the new, reinvigorated Quad.”

Quad’s mission is to deliver a better marketing experience so its clients can focus on delivering the best customer experience. As an MX company, Quad combines unparalleled integration capabilities with quantifiable business impact. Quad’s mission is validated by insights from recent Forrester research, which affirms that while marketers have a functional mandate to operate in today’s increasingly complex marketing environment, they have an emotional need to eliminate the complication caused by poorly integrated marketing ecosystems. Quad’s uniquely integrated marketing platform helps solve this dilemma. The new campaign focuses on Quad’s roll-up-its-sleeves ‘maker culture’ and covers the full breadth of Quad’s products and services, including creative, intelligence, content, direct, media, packaging, production and in-store.

“This is a huge moment for the Quad brand as most marketers have an historical impression of what Quad can do for them. Now with this very strong signal, we are telling the most complete story of our offerings as a modern marketing company that provides excellence at scale," said Josh Golden, Quad’s Chief Marketing Officer. “Our ‘Built on Quad’ campaign speaks both to our foundational history as well as how we are widening the aperture of our integrated offerings all under one roof in service to the marketer. This work also creates more visibility around our culture of makers, which deserves to be celebrated. It’s exciting to bring Quad’s story to the marketplace in this way.”

Groundbreaking partnership and insightful findings offer advancements in cost reduction and forecasting success for future entertainment content

StoryFit, a rapid-growth AI technology company providing machine learning and predictive audience insights for the entertainment industry, and Kouo, an emotional analytics platform connecting key feelings to consumer viewing behavior, today announced its strategic partnership and successful results from a joint research study testing the predictability of viewer reactions to scripted and produced content in notable TV shows.

"As a storyteller myself, being able to understand audience reactions by using the power of AI technology is revolutionary," said Monica Landers, CEO and founder of StoryFit. "This work with Kouo proves that the audience truly experiences what StoryFit identifies at script stage, before the film or show is ever produced."

Despite using different modalities at different stages of a content's life cycle (pre-production vs post-production), StoryFit and Kouo successfully predicted the rating of the pilot episodes of two Crime-Drama-Mystery shows – Clarice and Killing Eve –  highlighting moments of peak audience interest, while signaling potential areas of improvement. The significant overlap in StoryFit's data and Kouo's measured audience engagement levels proves to be a groundbreaking feat in the field of predictive analytics.

StoryFit's AI engine ran on publicly available pilot scripts to measure story elements from the script. Kouo ran the physiological data from participants who remotely shared their Apple Watch data from watching the finished TV episodes during a Zoom session. Both StoryFit and Kouo identified that audience responses were 50% less emotive for Clarice than Killing Eve, which is reflected in the higher outcome in both ratings and viewership performance. On comparable scenes, StoryFit and Kouo correlated on peak emotional engagement levels, underscoring StoryFit's success in identifying an audience's emotional reactions from scripts.

"Our unique partnership with StoryFit finally gives entertainment executives and creatives the opportunity to reduce costs attached to expensive changes in post-production by gaining valuable insights early in the pre-production phase," shared Elias Benussi, Co-Founder and COO at Kouo. "The results from our study with StoryFit reveal such meaningful findings; we are thrilled to continue to demonstrate these important correlations across our partnerships data set."

StoryFit's AI engine applies hundreds of proprietary models to measure character and story elements. When matched against billions of audience data points, the story intelligence platform simulates audience responses, producing powerful predictive insights for any kind of scripted content in the pre-production stage. Kouo's models run on physiological data, registering human biometric feedback during the viewing process to characterize a viewer's emotional response. All of these capabilities are vital for studios, streaming platforms, and production companies efforts in executing entertaining and successful content.

Flytxt, a leading provider of AI-powered SaaS for Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) maximisation, launched a Generative AI that assists digital product designers. This first-of-its-kind application of Generative AI solves a critical pain point faced by digital businesses worldwide — design of well-performing products faster and at scale.

Achieving product-market fit in volatile markets is a challenge, as the ease of adoption of digital products also lowers switching costs for customers. Generative AI is well suited to solve this challenge. It can programmatically evaluate several potential product designs to find the best match," said Dr. Vinod Vasudevan, CEO of Flytxt.

Flytxt's Generative AI can optimise price points, product attributes, bundling options, and associated benefits to meet business objectives like increasing revenue, retention, or margin.

Generative AI has been mostly used for creating original multimedia content and enabling intelligent conversations as in tools like ChatGPT. Flytxt's innovative application of Generative AI will open up new possibilities for product managers to bring in innovations in product design and ensure higher success rate. 

"Flytxt foresees widespread applicability of Generative AI in many Customer Experience workflows like product and campaign design," continued Dr. Vinod Vasudevan, CEO of Flytxt. "We will continue to integrate powerful AI capabilities like Generative AI into our solutions to help users make accurate decisions that impact long term value creation."

Furthermore, Flytxt Generative AI adds the ability to explain the decisions made by the AI. This transparency allows product managers to critically review the reasons behind the AI-recommended design, before they decide to approve and launch the product in the market.

Sports, media, and technology veteran joins Yahoo to oversee the #2 digital sports platform in the U.S.

Yahoo today announced the appointment of Ryan Spoon as the new President of Yahoo Sports. Spoon will be responsible for leading the growth and innovation of the Internet’s #2 ranked sports property, while positioning it for a new generation of sports fans.¹ He will report directly to Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone.

“Yahoo Sports has been a trusted voice and guide for hundreds of millions of fans through the years, who come to us daily for context, content and community,” said Lanzone. “We’re thrilled to welcome Ryan, a true product leader across all aspects of the digital sports experience, and whose expertise in building social sports communities and scaling engagement is perfect for leading Yahoo Sports into the future. That future truly just got more exciting with Ryan’s arrival and I cannot wait to see what we can do together.”

“I look forward to joining Yahoo at such an exciting time of growth and expansion,” said Spoon. “Yahoo Sports has been a consistent and important mainstay in the lives of millions of sports fans for over 20 years. With its first-class fantasy and product experiences, Yahoo Sports has shaped the way millions of fans engage with each other and their favorite teams. I look forward to creating new growth opportunities that take our product and content offerings to the next level.”

Spoon has held a range of prominent positions across the sports and digital media industry. Most recently, he was the COO at Sorare, a trailblazer in NFT-based fantasy sports. Spoon played a critical role in Sorare's expansion into the U.S. market, fostering the growth of the global football game, and launching Sorare: NBA and Sorare: MLB.

Prior to Sorare, Spoon served as the COO of BetMGM, one of the leading sportsbook and iGaming operators. During his tenure, BetMGM was the second largest sportsbook and iGaming operator across the markets it operated in. He also spent more than eight years at ESPN as Senior Vice President of Digital & Social, overseeing digital editorial, performance and strategy. Spoon also helped shape ESPN’s digital experiences, mobile applications and fantasy games.

Spoon is the founder of beRecruited, a recruiting platform that was acquired by The Raine Group in 2012. He is also a venture capitalist at Polaris Venture Partners, focusing on early-stage technology and consumer investments. Spoon’s individual accolades include being a two-time winner of the Sports Business Journal Forty Under 40 award in 2018 and 2020.

BMC HelixGPT, Service Model Blueprints Help Companies Proactively Find and Resolve IT Problems Faster

BMC, a global leader in software solutions for the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, today unveiled generative AI enhancements to the BMC Helix Service and Operations Management platform. This provides an intelligent assistant for service desk personnel and IT operators that enables them to solve complex system issues with greater speed and efficiency.

Organizations can use AI to analyze operational data from infrastructure, applications, and end-users to establish an unadulterated view of reality generated from human-based activities, such as tickets, incidents, and changes. Responses to queries to an AI system inform users about how individuals have been responding to native issues within their environment and business. This holistic approach provides a comprehensive understanding of the environment and its challenges for the business.

The BMC HelixGPT solution uses integrated large language models (LLMs) to harmonize traditionally siloed data sources, deriving actionable insights for anomalies and autonomous resolution of mundane issues. This groundbreaking technology is being deployed in four key areas, to support digital and IT operational efficiency:

• Plain-language summaries – BMC Helix Operations Management generates plain-language summaries, making it quicker and simpler for IT operators to understand an issue rather than decoding a string of output error codes, saving time and effort.
• Proactive problem solving – BMC Service Management generates one or multiple resolution summaries to speed root cause analysis of future problems.
• Faster problem identification and resolution – BMC Service Management automatically correlates hundreds of incidents helping service delivery teams find and resolve issues faster.
• Smarter virtual agents – Incubated in the BMC Innovation Labs, the BMC Service Management virtual agent analytics run clustering analysis on chat archives to find new or improved utterances to help virtual agents better answer and execute workflows associated with requests like ordering guest wifi or seeking guidance on clearing cache.

By using Service Model Blueprints to map common business services, the BMC Helix Operations Management solution accelerates analysis and MTTR (mean time to resolve) through historic analysis of a user's specific environment. Recurring situations are fingerprinted for easier future identification, reducing staff time and effort. And, using AI/ML, the solution's enhanced service insights watch over applications to spot signs of trouble and take appropriate action.

"We're excited about the benefits HelixGPT brings to our customers," said Margaret Lee, senior vice president and general manager of Digital Service and Operations Management at BMC. "By integrating generative AI technology into our BMC Helix platform, we're helping our customers achieve digital operational efficiency like never before – and we're just getting started."

New integration empowers the next generation of designers, marketers, and creators to design content at scale and reach their customers across all channels. 

Issuu, the largest SaaS content publishing and marketing platform in the world, today released a new app on Canva to enable bi-directional, seamless creation across the two platforms. Now content creators and marketers can cohesively leverage both platforms to enhance their content, extend its reach, and understand its performance. This comes at a time when demand is high, with Issuu seeing five times more Canva content uploaded to Issuu in the past year. The Issuu app in Canva's marketplace is now available to all users with an Issuu subscription here.

Through this powerful new functionality, all content creators and marketers can reach their audiences more effectively by creating content once, and sharing it everywhere. Through the Issuu app in Canva's app marketplace, creators can: 

• Utilize Canva's extensive library of templates, or start from scratch, to create standout designs before exporting and publishing them digitally on Issuu in a range of engaging formats;
• Share and send designs to Issuu in one click, turning Canva designs into page-turning digital flipbooks, mobile-optimized articles, social posts, GIFs, and more, in minutes;
• Maximize the reach and impact of content created on Canva with the integrated distribution and audience growth potential of publishing on Issuu;
• Leverage Issuu's AI to extend the life and reach of content with auto-generated, mobile-optimized articles, given the 6x increase in publication of AI-generated articles in the past year;
• Gain valuable insights into content performance by accessing Issuu's built-in statistics within the Canva workspace, and make data-driven decisions on how to iterate designs;
• Re-use high-performing assets to create new versions of the same content or additional formats for a variety of channels;
• Share digital content directly from Canva with fullscreen sharing and embed links provided by Issuu (coming soon).

"The number of organizations and individuals who designed content in Canva and uploaded that content to Issuu quadrupled within the past two years," said Joe Hyrkin, chief executive officer at Issuu. "To both companies, this signaled an immediate opportunity to evolve with our customers, and enhance their experience. This new integration simplifies their workflows, and enables them to transform, host, and more easily create content once and share everywhere."

Issuu is ideal for publishing and distributing marketing collateral, portfolios, brochures, newsletters, magazines, catalogs, and more. Issuu empowers content creators to transform designs from static files into dynamic marketing assets for every distribution channel. This includes flipbooks to embed in websites and blogs, mobile-optimized articles, on-brand posts for social media, GIFs for email, and more.

"By collaborating with Issuu's intuitive all-in-one publishing platform, we're powering a faster, more insightful content creation process for people who need to create, publish and share long-form content at high volumes, quickly," said Anwar Haneef, Head of Ecosystem at Canva. "Our mission at Canva is to empower anyone to design anything so they can achieve their goals. Through Issuu's app on Canva, we'll be helping customers get more value from their designs." 

Canva rolled out its new Canva Apps SDK offerings at its first developer event, Canva Extend, on June 14, 2023. Issuu CEO Joe Hykrin participated in a panel conversation on Driving Growth Together: Canva + App Developers, with D-ID Avatar and Amazon also in attendance.