Enterprise Communications

Generative AI and the UC Industry: A ‘Wag the Dog’ Tale

by David Danto
Is Generative AI a Wag The Dog Story?

If you’ve seen Wag the Dog, the satirical film from the late 90s, you’ll remember the plot revolves around a manufactured media spectacle. A spin doctor and a Hollywood producer conspire to distract the public from a presidential scandal by creating a fictitious war. It’s all a grand illusion, a story that holds up only as long as people believe in it. The thing is, it doesn’t actually matter if it’s real; it just needs to grab headlines, keep attention, and shift the narrative.

Now, let’s take a look at the current state of the Unified Communications and Collaboration industry. Replace the spin doctors with marketing departments and the fictitious war with Generative AI, and suddenly, you’re looking at an industry locked in its own race to win GenAI – a race to nowhere. Every major player in the UC&C space is clamoring to be seen as the leader in GenAI-driven innovation. But much like the fake war in Wag the Dog, the industry’s obsession with Generative AI feels more like a distraction from reality rather than a genuine advancement.

Generative AI Certainly Helps, But…

In just this month of October, we have seen and will likely continue to see some great advances in Generative AI within the UC&C space. Zoom introduced the next generation of many of its AI-based services like AI Companion 2.0 and Zoom Tasks – all, admirably, still free add-ons for paid users. Microsoft has already announced about a half-dozen new Copilot features – like Copilot Voice, and Cisco is expected to emphasize more Generative AI features at their upcoming Webex One event, where their event website already says “amplify collaboration & CX with AI.” These are all great, but they are not new products – just great new features.

The Problem: Generative AI is a Tool, Not a Savior

The problem isn’t with Generative AI itself and these various announced innovations. Generative AI is a tool, and like any tool, it has excellent uses. But somewhere along the way, the industry started treating GenAI as if it were the second coming of technology. Every new product announcement seems to come with the promise of AI-driven solutions that will revolutionize the way we collaborate, communicate, and conduct business. But here’s the kicker: none of this has materialized in any measurable way.

Take any of the major UC&C players I mentioned above and ask yourself this: Has Generative AI really saved anyone meaningful amounts of time? Has it demonstrably improved productivity in a way that anyone can quantify? The answer, in almost every case, is no. Sure, GenAI is good for a handful of use cases – transcribing meetings, summarizing conversations, providing insights to agents, starting documents, maybe helping with language translations – but these features, while nice, are hardly transformative. If we’re really being honest, they’re incremental improvements at best.

Chasing Headlines Instead of Value

So why is the UC&C industry so obsessed with Generative AI? Simple – see Wag the Dog – it’s a headline grabber. In an industry where competition is fierce and innovation can often feel stagnant, slapping an “AI-powered” label on a product is an easy way to stand out. And just like the fake war in that movie, the story only needs to hold up as long as it captures attention. Whether or not the AI actually delivers on its promises seems more and more like a secondary concern.

The irony is that this fixation on Generative AI has shifted attention away from the core values that made these companies successful with collaboration in the first place. UC&C is fundamentally about enabling better communication and collaboration, making it easier for people to work together, regardless of location. And yet, many of the firms in the industry have taken their eye off the ball, chasing an AI-driven future that, at least for now, is little more than smoke and mirrors.

A House of Cards Waiting to Collapse

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: Generative AI in the UC&C space is a house of cards waiting to collapse. The industry has been selling the idea that AI is going to fundamentally change the way we work, but there’s very little concrete evidence to back up those claims. In fact, one could argue that the overfocus on AI has actually slowed innovation in other, more important areas of the business.

For example, many UC&C platforms are still clunky, difficult to integrate with other systems, and lacking in user-friendliness. Interoperability between video platforms still requires significant complexity, and the idea of a single messaging platform across all the various providers is still more fantasy than reality. The focus on AI hasn’t improved these basic issues, and in some cases, it’s distracted companies from addressing them. Instead of refining core features, companies are pouring resources into AI gimmicks that sound good in a press release but offer little real-world value.

If Generative AI was really as good and as smart as these firms were claiming it could figure out how to automatically and in the background resolve meeting, messaging, and calendaring interoperability between platforms. That’d be a real AI advancement that I and countless others would praise, but no one is even suggesting that as a future capability.

No Money, No Productivity Gains

Let’s be blunt – as many others have documented Generative AI in UC&C has not saved any users any real money. It hasn’t saved any meaningful productivity in any measurable way. Sure, you can point to the occasional case study where a company saved a few minutes here or there by using AI to generate meeting notes or perform similar tasks, but in the grand scheme of things, these are marginal gains. They’re not the paradigm-shifting advancements that the industry wants you to believe.

In fact, if you look at the broader tech landscape, most companies aren’t even sure how to monetize Generative AI effectively. Yes, AI can be a powerful tool, but it’s far from being the moneymaker or productivity engine that many companies were hoping for. It’s become a shiny object that everyone is chasing, but no one has quite figured out what to do with it. UC companies need to incorporate GenAI and boast about it because their competitors do.

As an industry, we’ve never done a good job measuring productivity in any objective way. That actually helps the spin doctors in this case, because the wild claims of hours saved cannot be proven – and every player in the space knows that full well. In fact, the only measurable metric that can be attributed to GenAI is the layoffs and headcount reductions that its brainwashed disciples in the various technology company C-suites have caused in hopes of greater stock valuations.

A Perception Game

At the end of the day, this is all about perception. Just as Wag the Dog showed us that a well-crafted story could distract people from the truth, the UC&C industry has been swept up in a narrative about AI that doesn’t reflect reality. The more companies talk about how GenAI is going to revolutionize the industry, the more they believe their own hype. But the reality is that Generative AI is just another tool, and like any tool, it has its limits.

The real danger is that this AI obsession is diverting resources and attention away from the things that actually matter. It’s causing companies to lose sight of their core missions – creating products that help people communicate and collaborate more effectively. In the rush to be seen as AI innovators, many UC&C companies are neglecting the basics: better user experiences, more reliable platforms, and integrations that actually work.

A Race to Nowhere

So, where does this all end? In many ways, the industry’s current fixation on Generative AI feels like a race to nowhere. Just as the fabricated war in Wag the Dog was never going to lead to a real resolution, the UC&C industry’s AI arms race isn’t going to lead to any meaningful breakthroughs – at least not in the way it’s currently being portrayed.

OpenAI (that created ChatGPT) now has a $157B valuation on annual revenue of only $3.7B against $5B in annual losses.

At some point, the house of cards will fall. The industry will realize that AI is a useful tool, but it’s not the game changer it was made out to be. And, when that happens, UC companies will be forced to reckon with the fact that they’ve likely spent years chasing an illusion, all while letting their real strengths either become secondary or completely fall by the wayside.

The Takeaway: Focus on What Matters

Generative AI isn’t going to save the UC&C industry. It’s not the silver bullet that will magically make collaboration easier or more effective. What it can do is help in specific, limited ways – but only if it’s treated as a tool, not as a miracle cure. The real value in UC&C will always come from focusing on the basics: creating intuitive, reliable platforms that help people work together more effectively.

In the end, the industry needs to stop chasing headlines and continue delivering real value. Otherwise, just like in Wag the Dog, the whole thing is going to unravel. And when it does, the companies that stayed focused on what really matters – helping people communicate better – will be the ones that come out on top.