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When Tony Bates became chairman and CEO of Genesys in 2019, the company was already a global leader in contact center software. But Bates was determined to evolve its role in a rapidly changing tech landscape. Throughout his careerfrom transforming Skype into a communications powerhouse to leading Ciscos $20 billion enterprise businessBates has built a reputation for guiding companies through pivotal industry shifts. Now, he is steering Genesys to the forefront of what may be the next defining wave of enterprise technology: agentic AI. Today, Genesys launched Cloud AI Studio, a new platform designed to help businesses create, manage, and scale AI-powered customer experiences. Its first release, AI Guides, allows teams to build autonomous AI agents without writing a single line of code. These agents can operate across departments, execute tasks, and trigger workflows, all governed by clear business rules. Bates sees Cloud AI Studio as more than just a product launch. It is part of a larger effort to create a responsible, no-code environment for building semi-autonomous AI agents that can drive meaningful interactions at scale. Unlike past technology waves that improved speed or scale, agentic AI can orchestrate meaningful experiences that feel personal and emotionally intelligent at scale, Bates tells Fast Company. Cloud AI Studio enables someone with deep knowledge of the customer journey but no coding skills to build an intelligent agent by describing its purpose using natural language, by uploading existing documentation, or by having the system learn from successful human agents. A Tech CEO Who Understands Customer Needs As SVP and general manager at Cisco, Bates oversaw $20 billion in annual revenue and more than 12,000 employees. At Skype, he grew the user base to over 170 million, which led to an $8.5 billion acquisition by Microsoft. There, he integrated Skype across flagship products from Windows to Outlook. That same approach of integration, scale, and strategic vision is now driving Genesyss cloud-first reinvention. Under Batess leadership, the company has evolved into a modern AI orchestration platform, supporting nearly 6,000 organizations in more than 100 countries. Since he became CEO, Genesys has also raised more than $580 million in funding. At Skype, I saw how peoples expectations of communication could shift quickly, but only if the experience was intuitive, secure, and reliable. The same is true with AI, says Bates. Our AI strategy (at Genesys) is rooted in explainability, transparency and control. Whether its how an AI decision is made or how outputs are governed, people need to trust that AI is working with them. Without trust, scale isnt possible. An IBM study found that 80% of business leaders view ethics, bias, or explainability as major obstacles to AI adoption. A new McKinsey report shows that more than 80% of companies using generative AI have yet to achieve meaningful productivity or ROI gains, largely because they are limited to copilots, not true AI agents. With public trust and enterprise adoption still fragile, robust governance is becoming essential for any serious AI deployment. Genesys is positioning its new AI Guides as a direct response to these concerns. The solution offers configurable guardrails and model-agnostic architecture that allow teams to test, refine, and safely deploy agentic AI in high-stakes workflows. I see companies struggle with realizing ROI when their AI lacks this built-in governance, doesnt gracefully move to a human-supported experience when needed, or cant be easily set up or managed over time, Bates says. To unlock the full potential of AI, companies need the foundation and flexibility to apply it thoughtfully and at scale. AI Guides are designed to overcome the barriers by enabling orchestrated, semi-autonomous action with built-in governance. What sets Batess vision apart is his belief that AI experiences must be not only fast and agile but also personalized and emotionally intelligent. Our goal is to ensure empathy doesnt get sidelined with agentic AI, but amplified. I call it empathy in action, he says. We can now use agentic AI to react to emotional cues like tone, context, and sentiment and guide how decisions are made in real time. Through AI Guides, organizations will be able to simulate an AIs behavior before launch, maintain oversight throughout the lifecycle, and have firm paths for human escalation. Cloud-first, Future-ready Agentic AI The companys five-year roadmap includes migrating customers from on-premises systems, expanding the Genesys Cloud CX platform, and achieving Level 4 AI-powered orchestration, where intelligent agents operate with semi-autonomy under business-defined controls. Generative AI can deliver significant ROI if done right. Companies are now identifying use cases that rely heavily on things like troubleshooting, summarizations, and recommendations to automate conversations with virtual agents or make their employees more efficient via copilots, says ates. With agentic AI, we can finally address a long-standing tradeoff between business-first models that prioritize operational efficiency but erode consumer loyalty, and people-first approaches that delight customers but are too costly to sustain. Imagine a virtual agent that doesnt just answer a billing question, but also updates backend systems, checks inventory, and reschedules a delivery, all without human intervention. That is the future Genesys is betting on. Bates believes this potential will be especially transformative for industries with complex customer interactions such as healthcare, finance, and public services. These sectors struggle with agility because of compliance and operational complexity, he says. Genesys Cloud also integrates with proprietary and open-source models like Amazon Bedrock so customers have extensibility to innovate with AI for their specific needs without compromising safety, oversight, or performance. While the efficiency gains from agentic AI will be significant, Bates stresses that enterprise leaders must view this transformation as a long-term journey that drives experience-led growth. Ultimately, its about how we use AI within the rules we define while driving significant new business value, says Bates. Would you rather lead your industry taking advantage of transformational technologies early and create new differentiation, or choose to wait longer, risking being pushed aside by new and old competitors? Those who embrace agentic AI early will be the winners of the future, delivering empathetic experiences at the lowest cost possible.
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E-Commerce
Sam Altman is extremely kid-pilled. The OpenAI CEO announced the birth of his son in February. Since then, Altman has employed his own product, ChatGPT, to answer parenting questions. Those first few weeks were every question, constantly. Now I ask it about developmental stages more, he said on OpenAI’s in-house podcast. Altman isnt alone on this front. In fact, his experience reflects a growing trend: New parents are increasingly turning to AI to help navigate childcare questions. According to a 2024 study, 52.7% of parents explicitly used ChatGPT for parenting strategies. Altman is among these parentsand he acknowledges a personal dependence. Clearly people have been able to take care of babies without ChatGPT for a long time, he said on the podcast. I dont know how I wouldve done that. But could there be such a thing as too much advice? AI for every stage of parenting For more targeted advice, some turn to specialized chatbots. Becky Kennedy, an influential clinical psychologist and parenting guru known as Dr. Becky, created the popular Good Inside app. There, parents can ask questions to a chatbot trained on Kennedys own writing and videos. Oath Care rode the initial AI boom by launching its specialized ParentGPT product, but the company shut down last year. AI-powered pregnancy apps are also popular. Soula is a 24/7 AI doula, which feeds on data to help advise users on pregnancy and postpartum concerns. The app has raised $750,000 and is backed by the former vice president of fertility and period tracker Flo Health. Glow, which runs a family of apps that includes a popular ovulation tracker, has introduced AI data processing to its prenatal and postpartum apps. There’s also a world of extensive and expensive childcare gadgets. Tech-forward parents can get their hands on a $400 Nanit baby monitor, which tracks, logs, and flags a babys movements using AI. For $1,500, new parents can purchase an AI-powered crib. There’s even a $2,500 self-driving and self-rocking stroller. How much parenting advice is too much? AI offers broad swaths of easily accessible information. But sending parents into information overload can be dangerous. While few studies exist on the new era of AI-powered parenting, researchers have consistently studied the effects of easy internet access on childcare. According to a 2023 study, parents who feel less confident and more overloaded tend to increase their online searching for parenting advice, which can further erode their sense of efficacy over time. The study also found that information overload is linked with greater queries, meaning that parents who surf the web will keep surfing. Robyn Koslowitz, a child psychologist and author of Post-Traumatic Parenting: Break the Cycle and Become the Parent You Always Wanted to Be, has noticed a technological shift. Patients used to visit her with self-diagnosed advice from “Dr. Google.” Now, she says, they reference “Dr. ChatGPT.” The data aligns with Koslowitz’s experience: A 2024 study from the Kansas Life Span Institute found that many parents trust ChatGPT more than their healthcare providers. “Parents have a tremendous amount of self-doubt nowadays,” Koslowitz tells Fast Company. “Sometimes ChatGPT, or any other chatbot, steps in to take away decision-making. But the only way we learn discernment, and we learn to figure it out, is if we rely on our own judgment.” New York Times journalist Amanda Hess has seen up close the dangers of over-technologizing childcare. Her new book, Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age, tracks her uses of pregnancy tech like fertility apps and online support groups. She worries about AI’s impact, too. “Theres something lost when we turn too quickly to technologies like chatbots to troubleshoot our kids,” Hess writes in an email to Fast Company. “There are bonds that can be built by asking friends and neighbors and relatives for help, human connections that will continue to support our kids as they make their way through life.” In other words, it takes a villagenot just a chatbot.
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E-Commerce
Most politicians do their best not to let their faces betray what they’re thinking. Bernie Sanders isn’t most politiciansand the most recent evidence of that was his reaction when hearing that the U.S. had bombed Irans nuclear facilities over the weekend. The famously straight-shooting senator from Vermont learned the U.S. had entered Israels war with Iran while onstage at a rally on June 21. Though the crowds lively reaction is what ended up going viral, its Sanderss wildly expressive visage that captures the complex emotions of the moment. Ever since Israel launched a preemptive missile strike against Irans nuclear facilities on June 12, pundits and politicians have breathlessly speculated about whether the U.S. would step in to provide diplomacy or military might. As tensions escalated, President Trump teased his next move with typical reality-show flair. (I may do it, I may not do it, he said on June 18 of the potential for a U.S. strike on Iran. I mean, nobody knows what Im going to do.) Three days later, much of the world found out in unison what Trump decided to do: launch a series of coordinated bombing attacks against Iran. Video clips from Sanderss Tulsa Fighting Oligarchy rally that night reflect the gravity of the Iran news as it reached the public, and underscores how members of Congresstechnically the body that should green-light a military action like the one launched Saturday, code-named Operation Midnight Hammerwere blindsided by the news. A TikTok showing the senator and his crowd absorbing the information together has already been viewed nearly 20 million timeswith further millions of views in a tweet shared on X. @victoriaaayy This feels so unreal. Immediate chills. #berniesanders #berniesanderstulsa original sound – Victoria The video, taken at a distance from Sanderss right-side profile, starts with an audience member shouting, We just bombed Iran! The senator then stops speaking briefly, until an aide brings him a printout of Trumps statement from Truth Social, which Sanders reads aloudWe have completed our very successful attack on the three nuclear sites in Iran, ending with etcetera. From here, the crowd breaks out into a series of boos that give way to a spontaneous, deafening chant of No more war! Other videos taken at the event have emerged, including some from Sanderss own social team, showing what happened next. The Senator agrees with the thrust of the chant, and describes the bombing as so grossly unconstitutional. He neednt have said anything at all to get the same message across, though, since the footage of Sanderss face during the moment between hearing the shout from the crowd and reading the Truth Social post says it all. Sen. Bernie Sanders held a "Fighting Oligarchy" rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he received news of President Donald Trump's strikes on Iran.— CNN (@cnn.com) 2025-06-22T21:08:17.318Z First, there is half a snort as it seems to dawn on Sanders that the crowd may have more information than he does. When the news appears to sink in, his mouth hangs open in slack-jawed surprise, and he turns to get confirmation from his aides. After one of them presumably confirms the news off-screen with a nod, the corners of Sanderss mouth tighten into a sort of discombobulated grimace. Fury flashes across his whole face, leading to some wily eyebrow gymnastics. As he pauses, signaling the need for more info, an aide rushes over with a printout of Trumps Truth Social post. Upon laying eyes on it, Sanders shakes his head in the disgusted manner of someone disappointed despite already dismal expectations. He seems to simultaneously not believe what hes reading and understand that it makes perfect, horrible sense. (The look on Bernies face is all of us, reads a typical reaction to the video on Bluesky.) Part of the reason Sanders had the highest approval rating in the Senate as of January 16, according to Morning Consult, is because he is widely perceived as authentic. One of the many memes hes inspired, after all, was based on his refusal to pretend the weather at Joe Bidens inauguration in 2021 was anything less than soul-piercingly cold. This authenticity oozes out of the longtime anti-war politician in the rally clip, suggesting much of Congress was not informed in advance, let alone consulted, before the U.S. struck Iran. While the folks who might be inclined to attend a Saturday night Bernie Sanders rally are not exactly a representative sample of all Americans political leanings, early evidence suggests the broader public mirrors their instant reaction to he bombing news. A YouGov survey of 2,824 U.S. adults on June 22 found 85% of respondents answering no to the question, Do you want the U.S. to be at war with Iran? Only 5% answered affirmatively. Meanwhile, The New York Times checked back in with an ongoing panel of six 2024 Trump voters and found that two fully supported the Iran strike, two conditionally supported it, and two were against it. (One of the big reasons I voted for him was him keeping us out of stuff in the Middle East, said one in the latter category.) Many other politicians on both sides of the aisle also came out against the strike. While no record exists of what their faces looked like when they heard the news, thanks to Sanders, its easier to imagine.
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E-Commerce
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