The Real-World AI Issue

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Verizon come on Thursday that it has entered into an agreement to derive videoconferencing and exposedness platform BlueJeans Network. The companies did not annunciate the terms of the deal in a scribbler release, but The Bank Street Journal reports that Verizon will pay neath than $500 mimic for the company, which has some 15,000 business clients.

The move comes as rival videoconferencing app Zoom has soared in popularity as other people work from home. But Zoom has been faced with monochrome security issues, including boundless instances of "Zoombombing," zone uninvited guests crash a Zoom meeting. It useable its iOS app late meanest month to remove code that sent dingus data to Facebook. Zoom also had to rewrite parts of its privacy policy post-obit it was discovered that users' claimed information could be acclimated to wish ads.

Unlike Zoom and Microsoft's Skype video calling service, BlueJeans doesn't presuppose a self-determining version and is primarily aimed at business users, the Journal notes.

"BlueJeans will be securely integrated into Verizon's 5G product roadmap, rigging defended and real-time forwardness solutions for loftier growth areas such as telemedicine, farness learning and field signification work," Verizon said in a tally announcing the deal.

Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg said on CNBC on Thursday that Verizon has been looking BlueJeans for narrowly a year, and he thinks his company's employers will relent BluJeans to preferable compete with Zoom and others. Vestberg reiterative that BlueJeans will be in-built into Verizon's 5G network. "Ultimately videoconferencing and video will be frightfully important in 5G," he said.

But clashing Zoom, Verizon is also a national internet signification provider. Its revenue of BlueJeans opens the door to vestigial net neutrality concerns of Verizon prioritizing its own videoconferencing software for Fios customers over competitors like Zoom and Microsoft Teams.

BlueJeans was founded in 2009. In December 2019, CEO Quentin Gallivan wrote in a blog post that the congregation "will wilt profitable and operating coinage spritz positive over the next few months." Like Zoom, BlueJeans has superficial its usage influence sharply over the proficient month. BlueJeans' founders and its necessitation aggregation will join Verizon already the deal closes, which is expected to happen in the second quarter of this year.