In 2012, I wrote a four-minute children's film, My Garden Pals. The story concerned a female caterpillar (Katie), a child's hammer (Mark), and a child’s saw (Saly) that were left out in the garden to fend for themselves. I was able to get three of my students to record the character voiceovers, and I videotaped their performance in the hopes that a computer science major would be able to lip sync the animated characters and bring the story to life.

Unfortunately, while every student I approached liked the idea, none had the time to commit to animating the 2D (or preferably 3D) comedy. Not being able to find anyone to work on the project, I removed the assets from my hard drive, stored them on one of my backup drives, and stuck it in the closet. There it sat for 14 years.

Back in the Game

Fast forward to December 2025. I just completed an animation project where the boxes and bottles in a medicine cabinet come to life and try to save a tin of Rexall milk of magnesia tablets that had been left on the sink. I had intended to use stop motion animation, but I found it easier to complete the project using AI.

With that project successfully completed, I thought AI would be a great way to bring that old children's film over the finish line. Of course, the first challenge was to find where I put the footage. Eventually, I located the hard drive in a box and copied the video and audio of my former students speaking the lines. Although the audio was recorded in mono (left channel only), and I was able to use Abobe Premiere Pro to make a stereo version.

I had some familiarity with Grok (an AI assistant from xAI), having used it for The Great Rexall Rescue, and decided to use it to bring My Garden Pals to life. I typed in the description of the first character, Katie the Caterpillar. The information in the script said, “Katie was chewing on some grass in the small backyard. She's clearly a female caterpillar because she has a large bow on her one hair. Her eyes are too small for her face, and her mouth is overly large. Tiny, useless arms hang down at her side.”

With this information, I let Grok do its work and generate a still frame. After about 60 seconds, I had more than 50 different examples of what Grok thought my caterpillar should look like. I selected the one that I thought was best.

Watch What You Type

The next step was to type in Katie’s audio and have the animated character speak the words. This I got directly from the script. I would begin with typing, “Create a video having the caterpillar saying…” I made sure I selected the aspect ratio (16:9) and “Fun” or “Normal” for the style of video. After another 60 seconds, I had the caterpillar speaking the exact script.

Each video scenario/shot generated was limited to eight seconds in the free version. Free is no longer an option, as Grok now charges $30 per month, but videos can now be up to 12 seconds in 720p (or 30 seconds in 480p).

The AI-generated video and audio would add a little background music, the dialogue (spoken in a female voice), and end with a music stinger or some expression on the character's face. Several times I had to hit the “Redo” button because it would add bizarre things that I didn't really need.

Once I found what I wanted, I would select “Up Res” to make the footage 1,504x832 at 24p. I’m not sure how it arrived at those specific numbers, but I could use “Scale” under Effect Controls in Premiere to make it larger. At that point, I would download the file. I now had a completed file with video and audio.

Using the previous video just created, I would type in the next line of dialog that Katie the Caterpillar would say. All of Katie's lines in the script were done in one sitting. I found it easier to do all of Katie's shots first, followed by the shots of the other characters.

As I was just typing in the audio and what I wanted the character to do, I also wanted to add reaction shots. When Katie was talking, I may need a reaction shot from Mark the Hammer or Saly the Saw. Again, I would simply type in what I envisioned the other character doing with eye gestures, mouth movements, and expressions and Grok would complete it.

I did all of Mark the Hammer’s shots next. Although he was a slightly mean character, I had envisioned a Wallace and Gromit clay animation look. Putting all this in Grok, it appeared as you see it in the photo, complete with tooth marks on the hammer. The last character, Saly the Saw, was all done at once, too.

This all sounds relatively painless. However, it wasn't quite that easy. Although the version of Grok that I used was free and had no watermark, there were some things I had to work around. For example, I needed several e-mail addresses to login to the software. After several hours of work, I got locked out of the software because I overused my free allotment of time. In my defense, it never told me what my free allotment was.

I had tried other AI software, and you needed carrots or coins that would rapidly disappear as soon as you started working. Then, the software would request you get a license. Also, if I tried to do too much in one sitting, Grok would tell me that the hours of 2-8 p.m. were best suited for my needs, as 8:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. were “peak" hours. I rarely got much work done before 2 p.m. with my teaching schedule, but after 2 p.m. the software was less sluggish. (Again, this has changed with the pay model.)

Audio Obstacles

In animation, you produce the audio first and then worry about the video. This project was done a little differently in that I would type the audio I wanted with the video, remove Grok’s audio, and then insert my own prerecorded audio.

I imported the shots with Grok-generated video and audio intact into Adobe Premiere Pro. Once moved to the timeline, I would take the audio from 2012 and lay it underneath the audio generated by Grok. By soloing my student’s audio, I would match the lip sync with the 2026 visuals.

Usually, it was close because the audio was short. Sometimes, I would either speed up or slow down the visuals to make the lip sync match. The pacing of the AI-generated audio was rarely what I envisioned as a director. But if I put the word “beat” or “pause” in, the AI character would speak the word “beat” or “pause.” Hey, what do you want for free?

One time, when I was adding the dialogue for Saly the Saw, there was a large black cable attached to the back of the saw that moved up and down with her. I didn't want that, so I typed, "Please remove the black cable from the video.” When Grok completed the video, the dialogue was what I had typed in, plus Saly spoke, “Please remove the black cable from the video.”

Even typos would appear as real words. Other times, dialogue would appear as white text on the saw. I clicked the “Redo” button several times before the black cable disappeared and the audio mentioning the black cable was gone, too. Apparently, talking saw characters are difficult for Grok.

Sync or Sunk?

Getting my original audio to exactly match the AI’s audio was my next issue. The only remedy for that was the Razor Blade cutting tool in Premiere. I would get four or five words exactly how I wanted with lip sync, cut the scene, slow it to 83%, and keep it at that speed until the sync would drift. For an eight-second bit of lip sync, there may have been five different cuts and five different speeds.

It took me several weeks to complete the project during the golden hours during which I was allowed to access Grok. Despite the hassles, this whole AI technology is really mind blowing. Considering how Grok could do this for free and I have no artistic skill, this was amazing!

Watching the final project dozens and dozens of times, little issues were corrected, inconsistencies in the characters were fixed, and music and sound effects were added at the appropriate places. Now that I have this film under my belt, I found another short project that I started in 2016 about three young women who are tired of being two dimensional characters and go see a wizard to be converted to 3D characters. Looking forward to seeing how Grok brings that project to life.

Talk to enough people in the AV industry, and you will find broad agreement on one thing: the word AI has been stretched so far it has lost most of its meaning. Automation gets called AI. Rule-based alerting gets called AI. A chatbot bolted onto a monitoring dashboard gets called AI. The enthusiasm is understandable since the technology is genuinely moving fast, but the labeling has gotten ahead of reality, and the industry knows it.

But let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater. We should question inflated claims, but we should also be willing to recognize where AI can genuinely add value. Especially when it comes to operational intelligence, because the accountability gap between AV, IT, and the network is exactly where AI delivers.

Platforms Everywhere, But the Complete Picture is Missing

InfoComm 2026 made clear that the industry has moved on from boxes. A decade ago, the conversation was about whether AV over IP would work. Today, the question is how platforms work together. Every major vendor now has a management layer: room control platforms, audio networking platforms, collaboration platforms, AV management platforms. The market has answered the device fragmentation problem of the last decade by building around software and platforms rather than hardware and point products. That is the right direction.

A New Problem Has Been Created

Each platform sees its own slice of the environment. The collaboration platform knows whether the call is live. The control system knows whether the display is on. The audio platform knows whether the DSP is responding. The network switch knows whether the port is up. But none of them, individually, can tell you why the room is not working. Craig Durr, Chief Analyst and founder of The Collab Collective, put it plainly after walking the InfoComm floor: the single-pane-of-glass pitch, he observed, usually just aggregates noise into one place. That is the "phantomization" problem in a sentence.

The Accountability Gap

When something fails in a converged AV environment, the investigation must cross platform boundaries that no single tool was designed to span. IT owns the network. AV owns the experience. The collaboration platform vendor owns their stack. When something fails, the executive audience does not care which layer caused the issue. They only know the stream glitched, the room did not work, or the CEO could not be heard.

That gap, the space between platforms where operational problems live, is the specific challenge that AI in AV needs to address to be worth the name. Not AI that adds a feature to an existing platform. AI that sits above the platforms and reasons across all of them. Durr's observation from the show floor cuts to it directly: "Monitoring was never the job. Resolution is."

What the Network Sees

The network is the connective tissue between every platform in the room. It is also the layer that most operational AI in AV does not cover. Magic in the room, boring on the network. That is still the goal. But boring depends on active intelligence, not passive infrastructure.

The root cause of an AV failure is often not in the device layer at all. It is upstream: a VLAN misconfiguration, a port that dropped, a Quality of Service (QoS) policy that changed. Even though every platform reports green, the room does not work. Without network-layer visibility, the investigation stays manual, and the blame game thrives.

That is one of the reasons NETGEAR partners with companies like Utelogy, Providius, XYTE, and NetSpeek. We believe network-layer visibility belongs inside the AI's operational context, not alongside it. These kinds of platforms are going to use an AI-native AV operations product to treat the network as a first-class data source.

The industry solved device fragmentation by moving to platforms. That was the right answer to the right problem. The next problem is both holistic and operational: how do you manage an environment that no single platform can fully see? That is the question AI in AV should be answering. When it does, it earns its name.

A few weeks ago, while doing some research, I came across a Harvard Business Review article titled “Welcome to the Experience Economy” by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore.

Turns out I was reading an article authored in 1998.

In technology terms, 1998 feels like another world. Before smartphones. Before cloud collaboration. Before hybrid work. And certainly, before AI became part of the daily operating vocabulary of almost every organization.

Yet what struck me was not how outdated the article felt, but how relevant its underlying logic of value still was.

The article explored two ideas that feel particularly important to this moment.

The first is the progression of economic value—from commodities, to goods, to services, and ultimately to experiences. As markets mature, each layer of value becomes more vulnerable to standardization and commoditization. What was once differentiated becomes easier to compare. So the opportunity for value has to keep moving upward, toward experiences that are more personal, more memorable, more relevant, and harder to reduce to a line item.

The second idea is more commercial, but just as important. Pine and Gilmore argue that companies reveal a great deal about the business they are really in by what they actually charge for. I think the end-user version of that question is equally important: if what we charge for reveals what we value, then what are you actually willing (and able) to pay for?

Those two ideas stayed with me because I believe they ask uncomfortable questions of the enterprise collaboration space in this moment.

The Experience Proposition

For years, the AV and collaboration industry has spoken the language of experience; moving from products to solutions, from systems to services, from rooms to outcomes, and from technology to workplace experience.

Yet, if we are honest, we have moved further in the opposite direction. We talked about outcomes, but optimized for standards. We talked about workplace experience, but bought and sold around equipment, deployment, support, and refresh. We talked about delivering strategic value while creating efficient operational and commercial models.

There were, of course, valid reasons for those strategies at the time. As standardization became the dominant operating principle of enterprise AV, the goal was to create confidence that had been lost in these spaces in the past.

From a user standpoint, could people walk into a room and know what to do? Would the call connect? Would content share? And from a management standpoint, could support teams manage hundreds or thousands of spaces without being overwhelmed by variation?

Personalization, Adaptability, and Differentiation

Today’s AI age, however, makes that contradiction much harder to ignore. While AI can certainly further accelerate commoditization—making the familiar easier, faster, and cheaper to deliver—it also offers the potential for incredible new levels of personalization, adaptability, and differentiation.

Pine and Gilmore’s article reminds us of something uncomfortable. In the experience economy, consistency is not the highest form of value; it is the foundation on which higher value can be created.

Consistency may prevent disappointment, but it is not inspiring. It does not exceed expectations. It does not create the energy, memory, momentum, or meaningful differentiation that anchor exceptional experiences and outcomes.

A reliable room prevents failure.

A remarkable meeting creates value because people came together.

So, if we are talking about “experience” in enterprise collaboration, what experience are we really pursuing? Is it simply reliability and predictability? Or is it, indeed, can it become something far more connected to the purpose of gathering itself?

Let’s stay with that for a moment.

When we borrow the word “experience,” it is easy to imagine theatre, hospitality, immersive design, or event production. Great events are designed around attention, energy, resonance, memory, and motivation to act. They take enormous amounts of preparation and planning, but deliver returns to justify that effort.

Most enterprise meetings will never justify months of planning or event-level production, nor should they. They operate at a different scale. But the objective is not as different as we might think. Our events brethren understand something enterprise collaboration often underplays: just bringing people together is not enough.

So, in meeting or learning environments, the future question should not only be whether the technology simply equips the meeting. It should be whether the environment, and the experience it creates, actually increases the value of gathering.

Here’s an analogy that may help picture one example of that potential future more tangibly.

A great Executive Assistant (EA) is, in many ways, an experience enabler. They anticipate and proactively prepare. They understand context and act in response. They remove friction before it appears. They recall individual preferences and priorities, and add small but resonant touches. They help executives show up better than they would have otherwise.

Great EAs create exceptional experiences because they consistently exceed others' expectations in how well they proactively enable better outcomes.

An AI-Powered Collaboration?

So what if, powered by the increasingly intelligent and human-aware technology capabilities of AI, collaboration environments were architected in the future to behave less like passive containers and more like spaces equipped with trusted and proactive executive assistants?

What if they understood the purpose of the meeting? What if they could sense signals, understand initial objectives, help adjust the room to the activity, leverage and react to real-time context, quickly assemble additional supporting data or reach out to additional parties to contribute. To take collaboration infrastructure from merely operational enablement to something more.

Would that be something worth paying for?

To be clear, I am not suggesting completely abandoning the commoditisation-driven path overnight in a market still struggling to break free of that. But it cannot be the only path.

The actionable path ahead is not only about how your organization completely rewrites the foundations of every RFP (yet). But it is about more actively thinking about how you create some permissions, incentives, structures, and rewards that allow the market to explore something more valuable with you.

The more practical short-term opportunity is to run two collaboration strategies at once. Keep optimizing what is known, though with a new eye to future risk mitigation and objectives. But in parallel, begin to create another protected lane that enables you to actively explore what is becoming possible.

>> That may begin with a pilot, a different partner conversation, or a small proof of concept.

>> It may mean exploring ways to effectively understand and measure meeting impact and outcome.

>> Perhaps creating a shared risk/reward model that allows both customer and provider to baseline, refine, and prove it before the proposition is fully mature.

>> It may also mean broadening the voices in the strategy & planning room beyond traditional collaboration technology stakeholders to include voices who understand the likes of human behaviour, learning, culture, facilitation, organizational change, and how people actually create value together.

The right balances will be specific to your role, your organization’s structures, and ultimately your organization’s ability to embrace AI transformation generally and the “future of collaboration” opportunity specifically. But foundationally, there must be a recognition that organizations cannot procure their way into that future of collaboration if their processes only reward the commoditized providers they already know how to compare.

The question in this moment is not whether your organization can yet deliver the remarkable meeting of the future today. It is whether the decisions being made today increase your ability to pursue it tomorrow. That future will not be defined only by what AI technically makes possible. It will be defined by what organizations decide is worth valuing.

Perhaps that is why a nearly 30-year-old article still matters. It reminds us that technology may keep changing the tools, but value still returns to something deeply human: what people notice, what they remember, what they trust, what helps them, and what they believe was worth more than just what it costs.

For the enterprise collaboration space, generally, AI now forces a choice. Either collaboration becomes even more commoditised as the market gets faster, more automated, and easier to compare. Or the industry, in part at least, led by end-user organizations prepared to value something more, truly redefines its definition of experience around the outcomes people actually gather to create.

That is the move from pursuing reliable rooms to enabling remarkable meetings!

Not simply better spaces, but better reasons to believe that gathering was worth it.

Situational awareness across defense, public safety, and emergency response operations is built on one critical resource: timely access to accurate visual information. Whether it is an unmanned aircraft surveying a contested environment, a helicopter supporting search-and-rescue operations, or a drone monitoring the spread of a wildfire, video has become one of the most valuable sources of operational intelligence.

But raw video alone is not enough. The value of video lies in how quickly it can be delivered, processed, interpreted, and acted upon. Behind every mission-critical video feed is a complex ecosystem of technologies responsible for encoding, transporting, transcoding, and displaying video across networks that may be bandwidth-constrained, unreliable, or contested. This increases the need for edge-based technologies, which operate directly in the field, closest to where events are unfolding, where timely situational awareness is most critical and connectivity to centralized processing or analysis cannot always be guaranteed.

As missions become more complex and the number of video sources continues to grow, the industry is increasingly turning to AI to help transform video from a passive stream of imagery into actionable insight. When applied correctly, AI enhances existing video workflows; enabling more accurate interpretation, reducing cognitive load on operators, and helping teams focus on the information that matters most.

A Growing Role

Video has become central to modern defense and civilian operations, which increasingly rely on edge‑based personnel to process and act on real‑time video insights even when connectivity to central systems is limited.

In military and defense operations, full-motion video from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), manned aircraft, and ground-based systems provides commanders with real-time insight into evolving situations. These feeds allow teams to monitor troop movements, identify potential threats, and coordinate responses across multiple operational units. At the edge, forward‑deployed teams, UAV operators, and tactical analysts rely on immediate, locally processed video to make rapid decisions under dynamic and high‑risk conditions.

Public safety agencies rely on similar capabilities. Police departments integrate video from helicopters, drones, fixed surveillance systems, and body‑worn cameras to support investigations and real‑time incident management in the field. Fire departments increasingly deploy aerial drones during wildfire response to assess fire behavior, track fire lines, and identify potential risks to firefighters on the ground. Search-and-rescue teams also use aerial video to expand coverage across vast terrain, monitoring these feeds for visual clues that might otherwise go unnoticed from the ground.

What these scenarios share is a reliance on real-time video transport and edge-based processing. Video must move quickly and securely from the field to command and tactical operations centers (TOCs), often across multiple networks and systems. The workflows behind these operations must accommodate different video formats, varying bandwidth availability, and multiple viewing destinations simultaneously.

Video encoders compress and prepare feeds for transmission. Transcoders adapt those streams to different network conditions or viewing platforms. Players and visualization systems allow operators to view, analyze, and share information in real time.

These components work together to ensure that decision makers receive the video they need when they need it. However, as the number of video sources grows, so does the complexity of processing and interpreting them—and in environments where connectivity may be intermittent or constrained, edge processing can make the difference between receiving actionable information in seconds versus minutes.

Video Overload

Operators working in mission-critical environments are often tasked with monitoring multiple video feeds simultaneously. In some operations centers, teams may oversee dozens of live streams at once. During field operations, where fewer video feeds are typically available, the reduced number of video feeds create increased pressure on quick, yet accurate, decision making.

This is where AI is starting to play a bigger role. AI can analyze visual data in real time as well as identify objects or activities, so teams can make faster decisions or use the information later to spot patterns and support investigations. AI-powered video analysis introduces several capabilities that significantly improve how mission-critical video is used.

Object Detection and Recognition: One of the most widely used video-based AI capabilities is object detection using computer vision algorithms. AI models can automatically identify and classify objects within a video stream, such as vehicles, individuals, vessels, or aircraft. Instead of reviewing entire recordings, analysts can quickly locate moments where specific events occurred.

AI‑enabled video analysis enhances mission-critical operations across defense, public safety, and search-and-rescue by rapidly identifying key elements within live or recorded imagery. For example, in military reconnaissance, automated detection can flag even hard-to-see vehicle movement within a surveillance zone, eliminating the need to manually scan hours of footage. During wildfire response, the same capabilities help identify hotspots, vehicles, or structures, giving incident commanders faster insight into emerging risks. For search-and-rescue teams, AI can highlight potential human figures in aerial imagery, dramatically reducing search time in sea rescues, difficult terrain, or other low‑visibility environments.

Metadata Enrichment: AI also enhances video workflows through a process called structured observation management (SOM), which generates additional metadata such as image chips of detected objects, timestamps, geographic coordinates, or movement vectors. When combined with traditional video metadata, it creates a richer data environment that allows operators to search, filter, and analyze video more effectively.

Pattern Recognition and Behavioral Analysis (GEOINT AI): Geospatial intelligence artificial intelligence (GEOINT AI) is the National Geospatial Agency's term for utilizing SOM to enable analysis of patterns and behaviors within geospatial data, including video. For example, a vehicle repeatedly circling a location or an object moving against expected traffic patterns may indicate a situation that requires closer investigation. These capabilities are particularly valuable in large-scale monitoring operations where the environment is constantly changing.

Balancing AI with Security

Another important shift in mission-critical video workflows is the movement of AI processing closer to the edge. In many deployments, this intelligence runs directly on field-deployed encoding systems mounted on vehicles, aircraft, or portable command units.

Rugged edge devices, such as the Haivision Kraken X1 Rugged video processing appliance, illustrate how modern video encoders are increasingly designed not only to encode and transport video reliably, but also to support processing capabilities that help reduce bandwidth requirements and accelerate situational insight. This approach reduces network load while enabling faster insights for operators.

By performing object detection before transmission, systems can prioritize sending only the most relevant information. In many cases, full-motion video no longer needs to traverse constrained networks. Instead, detections, including cropped images of detected objects and metadata, are transmitted to inform which streams should be prioritized for further review.

Despite the clear benefits of AI in video workflows, security remains a primary concern in many mission-critical environments. Defense organizations and public safety agencies often operate under strict requirements governing how information is processed, transmitted, and stored.

The good news is that modern AI implementations do not require data to leave secure environments. AI models can be deployed locally within trusted infrastructure, whether in mobile edge devices, tactical systems, or secured data centers, ensuring sensitive video content remains within controlled networks.

Additionally, AI processing can occur without the need to permanently store video. Systems can analyze incoming footage in real time to generate operational metadata, then discard the raw frames once processing is complete. This approach allows organizations to extract AI-driven insights while reducing data duplication and maintaining strict control over sensitive information.

Encryption, authentication, and secure video transport protocols remain essential components of these workflows. AI should enhance operational capabilities without introducing new vulnerabilities.

Operational Intelligence

The role of video in mission-critical operations will only continue to grow. As drones, sensors, and connected systems become more widely deployed, the volume of available visual data will expand dramatically.

AI will play a key role in helping organizations manage this scale. Rather than simply delivering video from point A to point B, modern video workflows are evolving into intelligent systems capable of analyzing, prioritizing, and contextualizing visual information.

The goal is not to replace human expertise, but to ensure that operators receive the right information at the right moment. In high-stakes environments where decisions must be made quickly, that difference can be critical. By combining real-time video transport with AI-driven analysis, mission-critical organizations are moving closer to a future where situational awareness is not limited by the volume of available data but enhanced by it.

Zynchro System is harnessing the power of AI at the core of technical development while at the same time delivering its new AI assistant, Zyvo, to aid customers with content creation and campaign management.

[An AI Future]

Zynchro’s digital signage business's latest update delivers enhanced integrations with a full range of partners including android platforms CE Labs, Bluefin, Sony Aitrios, Placer.ai, and IRT for 8k content, as well as continued support for BrightSign and Elgato Stream Deck. Importantly, a manager of a digital signage network trained on the creation, management, and reporting features of Zynchro can seamlessly manage a vast and varied array of mixed platforms in the field. Retailers are currently running a variety of digital signage hardware in massive nationwide signage networks, all managed cohesively and simultaneously using only the Zynchro CMS.

“Saving time and money, essentially maximizing the monetization of their digital signage investments, is the most important metric for our customers,” stated Jose Behar, Zynchro CEO. “So, we are pleased to introduce Zyvo, a custom AI assistant that provides step-by-step instructions in campaign development and improved efficiencies at all levels within the application.”

Zyvo analyzes campaign results and delivers AI summaries of ideas and next steps based on performance. Clear and actionable reporting on key metrics enable brand managers to quickly and effortlessly make adjustments for significant improvements to bottom-line ROI.

Another example of augmented capabilities in monetization for Zynchro customers is found in a recent partnership with Placer.ai. Placer.ai delivers place-based data driven by interaction from customers’ cell phones. Location data is stored in the cloud and analyzed as part of a dynamic and robust Zynchro reporting tool further allowing network managers to optimize decision-making. Advanced location analytics deliver data tied to individual player performance, customer interaction with signage, and more, unlocking deep insights for enterprise-level optimization.

For more than a decade, AV Technology and Systems Contractor News have joined forces to deliver a full day of hot-topic panels, peer networking, and intimate conversations with vendors at the AV/IT Summit.

If you are a CTO, CIO, AV/IT director, consultant, or integrator, the AV/IT Summit on Aug. 5, 2026, in Times Square, is the must-attend event of the summer.

Space is truly limited, so apply now.

Check out the video below and learn why SCN’s Mark Pescatore and AVT’s Cindy Davis think you need to register to attend.

Designed to Engage, Inform, and Inspire

Our keynote, "The AI Moment for the Collaborative Workplace," delivered by Byron Tarry, founder and chief transformation officer of NΞXXT, is sure to inspire you and challenge your assumptions of AI in the workplace. Tarry will explore how analytics, automation, and intelligent agents can anchor the digital layer of a space, offering the ability to generate insight, optimize performance, and increasingly collaborate with the people who use it.

Pain Points 2026: Bring yours and get answers!

Designing the Modern Higher Ed Classroom: Moderated by HETMA's Joe Way

Broadcast-Level AV for Enterprise and Higher Ed: What you need to know to get started and level up.

The Consultant’s Roundtable: Learn how they can help your organization plan, design, deploy, and manage AV and IT infrastructure solutions—and, of course, simplify the process.

The State of Collaboration: We discuss the new collaboration space and the drivers for high-quality solutions.

The Great AI Debate: We discuss how AI is truly impacting Pro AV.

Better Every Year

“Each year I have been involved with the AV/IT Summit, it gets better and better,” said Cindy Davis, content director for AV Technology. “Last year, we introduced the Pain Points session, and it was so much fun. Attendees bring their top AV/IT pain points, and our panel of experts and other attendees attempt to solve them.”

On a more serious note, our panels cover some of the most important topics in the AV/IT industry today. There’s plenty of networking time to talk further with our speakers, your peers, and the AV/IT Summit vendors to share ideas.

You might think that stating that space is limited is a marketing ploy, but it’s not; we can only accept a limited number of people. Attendees must qualify to attend, so register today!

We look forward to seeing you at the AV/IT Summit!

AI capabilities in the AV industry are obviously accelerating rapidly—and with them comes a series of challenges. These include considerations around ethics and transparency about how AI is used, as well as training to ensure that teams across multiple parts of every business are using AI in a responsible way.

While the industry continues to navigate those challenges, it’s important to have some kind of formal accountability framework to keep everyone on the same page. Unfortunately, those frameworks have lagged behind the speed of development of AI tools.

That’s why we were really pleased to see the introduction of a new standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). ISO 42001 is the world’s first AI management system standard, and it provides valuable guidance for the fast moving world of AI deployment.

What is ISO 42001?

According to the ISO, the standard is designed to “set out a structured way to manage risks and opportunities associated with AI, balancing innovation with governance.” It specifies the requirements for an organization to establish, implement, maintain, and continually improve an Artificial Intelligence Management System (AIMS) within organizations.

ISO 42001 supports businesses as they consider what they need when rolling out AI. It covers whatever AI tools are being used, as well as how best to manage AI projects, including the assessment and mitigation of risks.

The ISO outlines its target users for 42001 as organizations "providing or utilizing AI-based products or services" and its objective as making sure those organizations have the guidance they need to use AI responsibly and effectively, even while the technology continues to evolve.

Consider all this, we felt it was important for Pleneo to follow the standards set out by ISO 42001, and were pleased to be the first device manufacturer in AV and unified communications to achieve the certification laid out by the standard. But why is it important that not just us but the wider industry adheres to standardization like this? And how does it actually keep companies, particularly tech companies, accountable?

Responsibility and Compliance

One of the biggest considerations for AI adoption is making sure that you’re using tools in line with regulations and in the most responsible way. There are a lot of ethical concerns over the data that’s used to train neural networks and models. If data is from an unverifiable source, there might be issues around ownership or biases being embedded into a final product or service. This unverifiable data is what stops people from trusting many AI products, as does the environmental impact of large AI applications.

The governance around how you use and manage data in your systems also ties into the correct use of AI. The ethical and responsible considerations aside, any organization using AI must be compliant with regulations and legal requirements. As the technology continues to be rolled out, there’s only going to be more regulations on the way.

The ISO 42001 framework, and its adoption of the PDCA—or Plan-Do-Check-Act—methodology ensure that companies are continually reviewing their use of AI data across their business to make sure they’re in line and compliant. For Pleneo in particular, the certification validates the approach we’ve taken to embedding AI technologies within our platforms. We’re not leaning on larger datasets available to public-facing AI tools but are instead processing intelligence locally.

It’s this data processing that the ISO 42001 standard addresses. We know that our use of AI reduces cloud dependency and preserves privacy. And with this standard, we’re able to demonstrate to our users a responsibility with our AI adoption, and that they can trust our AI tools in the same way as any other products in our lineup. Trust is going to be key for the entire industry as AI adoption continues.

Guidance and Opportunity

Businesses across all industries are appointing AI evangelists within their ranks. The AV industry is no different. Regardless of whether they’re new hires or people taking on the mantle within existing roles, many are working with AI for the first time. ISO 42001 provides those people, and organizations more widely, with practical guidance on how to deploy AI in many different ways, and how to mitigate AI-specific risks effectively when they arise.

Handling these sorts of issues more easily opens the door to innovation. Less time spent handling risks means more time taking advantage of the opportunities that AI presents across things like product and service development. That’s what is possible with the right framework in place thanks to the standards outlined by ISO 42001.

For the Pro AV sector, and for modern workspaces in particular, AI is influencing how meetings are prioritized, interpreted, and experienced. Oversight of the technology needs to extend beyond data protection to the integrity and predictability of automated decision making itself.

Formal governance standards like those from ISO will set mature platforms apart from experimental implementations. This is what ensures that intelligent meeting environments are viewed not as emerging technology, but as reliable, accountable enterprise systems.

Beyond singing along to Neil Sedaka in the car, my friend has never been musically inclined. And yet, now he's a published songwriter.

He sent me a link and there it was, a Christmas song. It wasn't him singing, but it was a fully composed song. He wrote the lyrics and a prompt, and an online AI service built his musical vision.

I gotta try this, I thought. Finally, a chance to repair my relationship with AI. Between bad headshots and warped action figures, my AI experiments over the past couple of years, while fun, would probably not land in the win column.

I've always wanted to record music, but I was impeded by my musical limitations. Writing lyrics isn't the problem, and I could carry a tune in a bucket in my younger days. But my drumming is elementary at best, my keyboard work is weak on a good day, and I'm guessing at least two guitar manufacturers would gladly pay me to admit publicly that I don't use their gear. So, to make my rock star dreams a reality, I'd need a band, some sort of recording studio, and a substantial budget to pay for all of that.

Scratch that plan. Enter AI.

First, I needed a song. I've had a song title floating around my subconscious for a while, so I sat down and wrote "Rockin' Chair" in about 20 minutes. If you study the lyrics, you can pick up the subtext of getting older and the loss of youth. But mostly it's an invitation to get busy on the front porch. (Hey, this is rock 'n' roll, not a sewing circle.)

Then, on a lazy Saturday, I went to the Suno website on my personal laptop. It took a few minutes to register, a few minutes more to write a prompt, and maybe two minutes to type in the lyrics. So, let's say I invested about 30 minutes in the process.

Suno spit out several versions of my song in less than a minute. And they were good.

Oh, the cadence was off, and none of them sounded exactly like how I "heard" the song in my head. However, every version had a good beat, background vocals, solid instrument work, and all the spit and polish you'd expect from a hit single.

I literally closed my browser and walked away. Didn't even look at it for more than a week. Honestly, I needed to process what had just happened. In seconds, AI had made my song a reality. I hadn't even plugged in my amp.

At this stage of my life, I have no illusions of becoming a musical sensation. If everything goes right, maybe I'll make tens of cents in royalties from "Rockin' Chair" over the next decade, which will not even cover the cost to use the service for a month. Oh, you can get a taste for free, but if you want to tweak your song and avoid copyright issues, you'll need to spend some money.

But that's not the point, is it? The point is a guy who can only play a few chords on a guitar could publish a toe-tapping tune in less time than it took to write the lyrics.

That said, this is AI, which means it has to learn how to do all this, no doubt using data (read: songs) produced by copyrighted artists. Remember, AI is not about soul, it's about statistical patterns. Essentially, my song is a kernel of creativity wrapped in a cocoon of predictive chunks and synthesized production.

So, is Suno a shortcut? You bet. Does that make it less of a song? I'm not sure. After all, we've been listening to songs built around music samples for decades. One could argue that AI is the next step in that sort of musical evolution. And I have it on good authority that Nashville music pros are using Suno to quickly produce demos (and save a lot of money in the process).

I'm not ready to equate machine learning to inspiration. But I'll say this: I think "Rockin' Chair" is a good song—and without AI, it would have never existed beyond my notepad. Rock on.

Technology leadership does not only mean asking an industry for better products or faster roadmaps. Sometimes it means looking back at the assumptions that have served us well, and asking whether they still serve the future we now need to build.

One of those assumptions in the AV industry is standardization.

For years, standardization has been one of the most important operating principles in enterprise AV and collaboration. It has helped organizations scale, reduce complexity, improve supportability, control cost, and create more consistent user experiences. Indeed, I spent more than a decade leading an organization that built its value proposition on the principle of Scale, Standardization, Simplification, & Speed.

We all know our industry's journey. There was a time when AV-enabled spaces were relatively few. Organizations invested only in the most important rooms. Bespoke design was possible because the volume was manageable.

Then the world changed.

Collaboration became more central to how organizations worked. Video became normal. Hybrid work expanded the pressure on meeting environments. Costs came down. Expectations went up. The challenge was no longer a handful of premium rooms. It was tens, hundreds, or thousands of spaces. In that reality, standardization was not only logical. It was a rational and required response to scale.

We have seen similar patterns in other industries. Local, highly human-scale models gave way to larger systems built around consistency, efficiency, and scale. Then, disruptive digital platforms introduced a third possibility: combining scale with greater personalization and relevance. We all know those stories, from Amazon to Netflix and beyond.

I believe that moment has arrived for our industry!

Change in an Era of AI

There will always be a place for highly customized spaces: executive environments, boardrooms, innovation labs, teaching studios, immersive rooms, command centres, and other spaces where deeper tailoring is justified. But for the broader enterprise estate, the old trade-off between scale and personalized fit is going to change in an AI era. Not because AI is a magic wand, but because it is relevant to addressing the very frictions that standardization was designed to manage.

We know that in the past, more capability meant more complexity. More flexibility meant more support burden. More customization meant more cost and inconsistency. That was not practical, which is why we simplified and standardized. Simplified room types, user interfaces, and feature sets. Exactly what was required to make the overall experience usable and manageable.

But there is a difference between simplifying because users have simple needs, and simplifying because our legacy systems and workflows could not manage complexity.

And that distinction matters.

Meeting and learning spaces were not simplified because users all wanted the same experience, but because more capability created too much friction to justify otherwise. So we designed interfaces to meet the lowest common user denominator. And in turn, we answered the needs of the supporting stakeholders as well, because the cost of variation was too high.

That made sense, but it also created a hidden effect. One of the hidden risks of standardization is that it does not only standardize solutions, it can standardize imagination. Over time, the constraints of a model become so familiar that we stop seeing them as constraints.

But what if some of those assumptions were actually just necessary coping mechanisms? Did we standardize because it represented the best possible experience, or because variation was too difficult to deliver, support, govern, or evolve?

That is not a criticism of the past, but a challenge for the future. It is not that we built the wrong rooms in the past. It is that in a new AI reality, the game itself has changed.

And that is what makes this new era so difficult.

Decisions in a Period of Unparalleled Uncertainty

End-user AV technology managers are being asked to make decisions in a period of unparalleled uncertainty, yet with traditional inertia. The investment decisions being asked of them today are expected to serve organizations for years ahead, yet they are being made in a reality where AI will change workflows, user expectations, interface models, support structures, and the role of the physical workplace itself in ways we cannot yet fully imagine.

That is a hard position to be in. It is easy to say “be more innovative, evolved, prepared” from the outside. It is much harder to put your name to decisions when the crystal ball is murkier than ever, and the consequences of getting it wrong may become visible sooner than ever.

So, the practical question is not whether every future capability is ready to deploy tomorrow. The better question is whether today’s standards, partner relationships, and decision criteria are preparing your organization to take advantage of that future potential or constraining it.

I do not believe the future is a pendulum swing from standardization back to customization. The better proposition is that the very definition of standards needs to evolve to create an entirely new paradigm.

Consider that historically, a room standard meant a fixed room type, equipment package, UI, capability set, and lifecycle expectation. A comprehensively defined answer built heavily upon the realities of traditional physical construction and real estate lifecycles.

In the next model, a standard may need to become more than just a defined answer. It may need to become more of a foundation.

The physical infrastructure, network requirements, security model, platform architecture, interoperability principles, and support processes may still need to be standardized. But above that foundation, the experience layer must become increasingly adaptive and digitally agile. One that can behave and equip users differently for a project review than for executive alignment. Differently for training than for ideation.

The room may be physically the same. The experience may not be.

That is the new possibility. The emergence of standardized infrastructure with adaptive experience.

That is how we can truly serve diverse users, activities, and outcomes, while leveraging that diversity as the very reason we convene people in the first place. All the reasons that were not possible in the past are eroding before our eyes.

Embrace that concept, and it frankly changes the role and importance of the end-user AV technology manager. The job is no longer simply to define the right room standards and defend them over a five-year lifecycle. Rather, the job is to build the conditions through which collaboration environments can evolve as capability, user expectation, organizational need, and AI-enabled possibility change around them. It is to recognize that we cannot deliver tomorrow’s adaptive collaboration expectations through models built around yesterday’s static propositions.

So the next leadership question is not simply “what can we standardize?”

It is “what should our standards enable?”

That is a very different question.

Manage and Mitigate Opportunities and Risks

Of course, I am not suggesting we all just embrace AI enthusiasm and unbridled optimism. But as in any time of change and lack of clarity, it means developing a strategy to manage and mitigate both the opportunities and risks ahead.

That strategy will, of course, not look the same for every organization. A global bank, university, healthcare provider, government agency, technology company, law firm, and manufacturer will each have different collaboration realities. But here are a few universal questions you might ask of your current standards to catalyze the mindset shifts we all need to embrace.

>> Which current standards still deliver value because they improve reliability, consistency, security, supportability, or user confidence?

>> Which exists because variation was historically too difficult to manage?

>> What infrastructure truly needs to remain fixed and physical, and what could become more flexible and digital?

>> Where might today’s standards, even unintentionally, limit tomorrow’s capability?

A “medium meeting room” is not a meeting purpose. A classroom is not automatically a learning experience. As we move from an era of equipping rooms to enabling outcomes, true leadership will be about understanding what people are actually trying to achieve in these spaces: deciding, creating, teaching, selling, learning, aligning, innovating, or responding to change. Understanding those patterns will become the critical capability in enabling spaces to adapt to real-time context and application.

Of course, that should change conversations with the supply chain: vendors, integrators, consultants, and service providers. They should not only be challenged on what they can deliver today, but on their vision of the future, and how they can help you prepare for it. In an AI era, the value of a partner may increasingly depend less on whether they can deliver an agreed standard today and more on how they can help that standard evolve tomorrow.

The risk of not making these sorts of foundational adjustments is not just technical debt, financial write-off, or user dissatisfaction. If collaboration is becoming the critical infrastructure of innovation, then the cost of rigidity becomes a constraint on organizational speed. A room standard anchored in yesterday's thinking that cannot evolve may slow more than a technology refresh. It may slow how quickly an organization can embrace the new ways of working of an AI age. And that should be a critical concern for every organization.

Across the industry, we need to embrace the fact that the game has changed. The constraint set is changing. The expectations of users, teams, and organizations are changing faster than traditional meeting room lifecycles were ever designed to absorb. So if that old model treated standards as fixed answers, the next model should treat them as adaptive foundations. The goal is not to choose between consistency and personalization. It is to create the conditions where consistency, governance, supportability, and scale can coexist with far greater human relevance, flexibility, and transformative future capability.

The industry can build products. Vendors can develop platforms. Integrators can deliver systems. Consultants can advise. But end users live in the real organizational context. They know the workflows, constraints, cultures, frustrations, security realities, support burdens, and business priorities that determine whether technology creates value and impact, or merely fills rooms.

So, whether you are an end-user Collaboration Enablement leader, or wherever else you might sit in the industry, I leave you to consider this.

Will the next “standard” you develop be anchored on a room type at all? Or might it be based upon the foundational principle of adaptability itself?

And if that is indeed the case, what might need to change in you, your team, and your organization to make that a reality?

“Sound is not merely an accompaniment to my visual installations; it is an intrinsic element, co-constituting the overall sensory experience,” said artist and visionary Refik Anadol, whose DATALAND, the Museum of AI Arts, opened to the public on June 20, 2026, at The Grand LA in downtown Los Angeles. With that conviction at its core, DATALAND has partnered with L-Acoustics to create an aural environment unlike anything found in any permanent museum anywhere in the world. One powered by an L-ISA Hyperreal Immersive spatial system and, for the first time in the Americas, the groundbreaking L-Acoustics Ambiance hybrid active acoustic enhancement solution, installed by Certified Partner Solotech.

[SCN Goes Inside Cosm Atlanta]

DATALAND is the world’s first omni-sensory AI arts museum, activating all five human senses. Its inaugural exhibition, Machine Dreams: Rainforest, developed by Refik Anadol Studio’s collective of artists, scientists, architects, and engineers, runs through January 31, 2027. Spread across five galleries, Machine Dreams: Rainforest redefines art for the age of machine intelligence. No longer a finished object, this art is a living work that unfolds in real time through the dynamic interplay of data, computation, and human presence. Visitors interact directly with artworks that respond to them; biometric data from wearable devices is woven into the experience itself.

L-Acoustics is among a group of technology collaborators on the project, alongside NVIDIA, Google Cloud, Founding Olfactory Partner L’Oréal Luxe, and Epson. As the audio partner, L-Acoustics’ role goes far beyond sound reinforcement: Its technology is integral to the full realization of Anadol’s creative vision, shaping every emotional beat of the experience through a 250-speaker spatial ecosystem with a resolution unprecedented in any permanent museum anywhere in the world.

The Sound of DATALAND

At the heart of DATALAND’s audio architecture is L-ISA Immersive Hyperreal audio, which gives artists the ability to ‘paint’ with sound across a three-dimensional canvas, in front of, above, and entirely surrounding each visitor. Audio content created by composer and sound designer Kerim Karaoğlu draws on original music, the acoustic ecology of the rainforest, and the sacred healing songs of the Yawanawá, and is fully integrated with the visual art, responding to the visuals in real time, inhabiting the same space, completing the experience at a sensory level that transcends any single medium.

L-Acoustics Ambiance extends this further, transforming the acoustic character of the room itself. Ambiance can make a space feel intimate or vast, enveloping or electric, altering the reverberation time and character of the room in real time to serve the creative content. DATALAND marks its first permanent installation in the United States.

Anadol’s work is guided, as he described it, by “a desire to craft a soundscape that would serve as an auditory echo of both the architectural essence and the subtle emotional atmospheres inherent in the spaces.” L-Acoustics Ambiance is the instrument that makes Anadol’s vision possible.

“For Refik and the DATALAND team, sound has always been as essential to the work as the visuals themselves, which is what makes this collaboration so meaningful,” said Yann-Gaël Gicquel, director of product management, spatial systems at L-Acoustics. “This is the culmination of a long and deeply shared vision. We’ve worked together to build technology that supports the art, and becomes part of it. With L-ISA and Ambiance, that means giving Refik’s studio something they can keep playing, keep evolving, keep imagining with. That is what it means to be a true creative partner.”

Engineered for Every Vision

Because DATALAND is designed to evolve, with its content and experiences continuously developing over time, L-Acoustics engineered each gallery to deliver the most flexible, most adaptive audio platform possible. Whatever Anadol’s team imagines, this spatial system can realize it.

The first space guests encounter upon entering DATALAND, the Discovery Portal sets the tone for everything to follow with welcoming L-Acoustics sound via four Soka colinear arrays and four SB10i subs driven by a single LA7.16i. Premium L-Acoustics background music systems extend through all common areas and the gift shop, ensuring the sonic quality of the museum reaches every corner of the guest journey.

DATALAND’s main exhibition space, nearly 5,000 square feet with overhead speakers positioned 21 feet high, is the centerpiece of the immersive audiovisual experience. Three vertical rings of L-Acoustics loudspeakers envelop visitors in a fully spatial acoustic landscape designed to support Refik Anadol Studio’s generative visual art. Sound can be precisely localized to any point on the walls or ceiling, creating a seamless union of image and audio.

The bottom layer alone features 27 Syva colinear speakers, each paired with a Syva Low and Syva Sub, delivering remarkable sonic resolution and low-frequency extension across the full sweep of the space. The surround and height layers add 25 and 12 X8i coaxial speakers respectively, with eight KS21i subwoofers providing room-filling foundation. Twenty-five X6i coaxial loudspeakers deliver direct-routed personalized audio encounters for individual guests. The space is driven by 12 LA7.16i amplified controllers using L-SMART technology, which continuously monitors and optimizes power consumption to average 30% greater efficiency compared to traditional processing platforms, with zero compromise to the sound. An L-ISA Processor II controls the object-based mix.

The Sanctuary measures 20x35 feet, with ceiling speakers reaching 30 feet high, a configuration that takes full advantage of Ambiance. Here, the technology is used not merely as a sound effect, but as a live acoustic tool: The reverberation time and character of the room itself shift in real time with the content, transforming the space from intimate to immersive and back again.

Three rings of loudspeakers surround the gallery: a bottom layer of 17 5XT compact coaxial speakers, a surround layer of 11 X8i, and a height layer of six X8i. Low-frequency power comes from two KS21i and nine SB10i subwoofers, with six 5XT for individualized audio moments.

Connecting the exhibition areas, the Latent Gallery features video on one wall and seamless overhead audio continuity throughout. Ten X8i loudspeakers and two KS21i subs ensure visitors are never outside the sonic experience as they move between galleries.

The Infinity Room is a compact, self-contained space where audio and video are deeply intertwined for an intimate sensory encounter. A focused L-Acoustics system, comprising 25 X6i and 10 X8i loudspeakers plus two KS21i subwoofers, all driven by three LA7.16i, provides clear, full-range sound reinforcement in precise support of the room’s visual installations.

Across all spaces, the DATALAND installation deploys a total of 250 L-Acoustics loudspeakers, with audio transport split between Milan-AVB and AES67 protocols, giving DATALAND maximum flexibility for whatever its content becomes next.

“My work is guided by a desire to craft a sonic landscape that would serve as an auditory echo of both the architectural essence and the subtle emotional atmospheres inherent in the spaces,” Anadol has said. “With L-Acoustics L-ISA and Ambiance technologies, those atmospheres are no longer fixed. They are alive.”

Artificial intelligence has taken over Pro AV. At least, it feels that way. New products tout “AI this” or “AI that.” Some folks brag how AI is simplifying their inbox or streamlining their reports, while others fear for their jobs. Every professional conversation somehow seems to wind its way back to AI.

Once we get past summaries that reduce hourlong meetings into bullet points and Instagram videos that trample on intellectual properties for comedic effect, what does it all mean? From machine learning to large language models (LLMs), how is AI truly impacting the Pro AV industry today, and what can we expect in the coming years?

To find the answers, SCN reached out to industry futurists and technologists to collect their thoughts on the current state of AI in Pro AV—and explore potential roadmaps into our industry's next chapters.

Accentuate the Positive

Julian Phillips, SVP and managing director of XTG, the AVI-SPL Experience Technology Group, has spoken extensively about AI and last year released LevAIthan: A Brief History of Humanity and AI, a book co-authored with Athena, his AI assistant. In his book, he argued that we should stop calling it “artificial intelligence” and start calling it “augmented intelligence.” His point is that AI’s greatest value is in strengthening people, not replacing them.

“If we call it artificial intelligence, we think substitution. If we call it augmented intelligence, we think amplification,” he explained. “The wording matters because language shapes strategy. The best AI does not remove the human being from the experience; it makes the human more capable within it.”

According to Phillips, AI is most powerful when it helps designers, technicians, support teams, and end users work faster, smarter, and with greater confidence. “At AVI-SPL, for example, Symphony helps organizations monitor and manage assets across the network, identify issues earlier, and support users more proactively,” Phillips said. “That is a practical example of intelligence improving both operational performance and the user experience.”

In his role at Midwich, Chris Neto, head of emerging markets, revealed that AI is changing the conversation both internally at and with external vendor partners. “'Emerging markets' used to mean geography. Now it also means capability,” he said. “AI is accelerating that shift. Markets and verticals that may have lagged in the traditional sense now have the opportunity to leapfrog through software-driven, AI-enabled solutions.”

And that’s where Neto’s role is evolving. “It’s no longer just about identifying where growth might happen,” he said, “it’s about helping our teams within Midwich understand what’s possible and then extending that insight to our vendors and manufacturer partners so we can move together, faster and more strategically. AI doesn’t replace strategy, but it absolutely sharpens it.”

Of course, the willingness to integrate AI with AV systems depends entirely on the client, said Rich Green, president and CEO of Rich Green Design. "We’re still very early in the AI journey," he said, "so what my clients demand is superb audio, superb video, and flawless connectivity. Our job as integrators is to help them understand how AI fits into their broader digital transformation strategy. If AI can improve speech intelligibility or automate presentation connectivity, hooray! If it gets in the way, VC partners get ornery."

Perceptions and Realities

So, is AI being perceived in Pro AV as a godsend or a job killer? If you ask Neto, it's following a very familiar pattern.

“Every major shift, from DSP to networked AV to the cloud, came with the same fear cycle,” he said. “AI is just the latest iteration. The difference now is the speed and accessibility. The people who see it as a job killer are usually thinking about tasks. The people who see it as a tool are thinking about outcomes.”

"The Pro AV industry has always relied heavily on automated workflows, and AI represents a new era for efficiency," added David Labuskes, CEO of AVIXA. "Adopting AI requires thoughtful consideration of how it fits into current systems and processes. In some cases, it may accelerate tasks or simplify programming, but the fundamentals remain the same: Professionals are still defining the goals, guiding the system, and validating the outcomes."

AVIXA maintained a pragmatic view of AI in its education program at InfoComm 2026. "AVIXA is focused on what’s actually happening with AI today," Labuskes said. "We’ve moved past the phases of 'AI will do everything' and 'AI isn’t doing most of those things.' Instead, we’re now in a phase where practical applications are emerging and adoption is steadily growing. Rather than focusing on fears of widespread job loss, the emphasis is on how people are actually using AI in their day-to-day roles to work more efficiently and effectively."

Phillips warned that AI literacy is vital in today's Pro AV workplace, because AI is entering the workplace—whether people are ready for it or not. "In modern Pro AV, understanding AI is becoming as important as understanding signal flow," he said. "AI literacy matters because it helps people separate real capability from hype. It helps them ask better questions, apply the tools responsibly, and have more credible conversations with customers who are already looking at how AI fits into their workplace strategies. This is not about keeping up, it's about staying ahead."

Joe Andrulis, EVP of corporate development for Biamp, expects AI will empower productivity gains, because it eliminates training barriers and helps workers come up to speed more rapidly. "With AI, products get easier to implement because the products themselves incorporate artificial intelligence to make setup more dependable and to handle situations dynamically," he explained. "However, I don’t know the net effect, positive or negative. I think the effect of AI will be varied by sector and by application area. Some jobs are going to be greatly enhanced, and AI will be a big boost to AV, while others might be negatively impacted."

For example, Andrulis acknowledged that one of the big challenges in the dealer community has been finding qualified people. "The more that AV systems can incorporate intelligence natively, the more easily integrators can install systems with less specialized workers, which can make it easier to hire while also ensuring a more standardized outcome across geographies," he said. "In the past, customers were often willing to pay for high-value installation services, but that was very difficult for dealers to scale as the pool of qualified experts is very limited. With AI, they are giving up some of that high-value work, but in return they get scale. Scale is how dealers can win with AI."

Aim Higher

"On the design and pre-construction side, AI tools are meaningfully accelerating how integrators work," Green observed. "AI can help parse complex RFPs, draft system narratives, cross-reference equipment specifications, and even generate first-pass signal flow documentation. Work that used to take days can now take an hour. That's not a small thing because it frees up real time for the higher-value, higher-judgment work that actually requires a human expert."

That expertise is an indispensable part of equation. "We dare not underestimate the human in the loop," Green warned. "Nurturing talented and competent professional humans is the most important path to sustained success and prosperity. The liability and the craft are still ours to own."

AV has always been built on relationships, trust, and experience, which Neto said AI can’t replace. Instead, AI removes friction. “It handles the repeatable, the predictable, and the scalable, which frees us up to focus on what actually matters: creativity, customer experience, and quality service,” he said. “So no, it’s not killing jobs, but it is going to expose complacency.”

Based on discussions with clients and other integrators, Dave Van Hoy, president of Advanced Systems Group, said defining what AI is for Pro AV really depends on who you ask. “AI is a buzzword. AI is an initiative. AI is an actual functional tool. We're at the evolution of these tools, where all these things are true,” he offered. “It’s in many applications. It's a management initiative with no clear definition. It's being used today in everything from camera tracking to closed captioning, graphics generation, and many other things."

AVIXA research shows a shift toward practical adoption. According to Labuskes, studies of AI use in the Pro AV workplace show significant growth in implementation, along with increased recognition of its benefits, particularly since the rise of GenAI. "While AI continues to evolve, it is clearly becoming more deeply embedded within organizations," he said, "and as adoption matures, its business impact will be increasingly measurable."

But Phillips believes too many organizations are treating AI as a productivity hack, rather than as a "partner in exploration" that can help teams model possibilities, test ideas faster, identify patterns, and solve problems. "If we're implementing AI just to make us faster," he argued, "we're aiming too low."

Present Practicalities

In the real world, AI features have gone from nice-to-have to expected faster than most people realize. “Walk into any modern meeting space, and AI is already there—whether people call it that or not,” Neto offered. “Auto-framing, speaker tracking, noise cancellation, transcription, translation. These aren’t futuristic features anymore, they’re baseline expectations.”

However, when it comes to AI and UCC, Neto thinks the industry needs a reality check. “AI is only as good as the environment it’s operating in,” he explained. “We can’t talk about AI-driven transcription and translation, arguably two of the most in-demand features from end users, without talking about acoustics. If the room sounds bad, the AI performs badly. It’s that simple.”

Shure is already integrating AI into its products to provide intelligent noise suppression and voice focus. "AI is only as effective as the data it ingests," agreed Christine Schyvinck, president and CEO of Shure, "so pristine audio is paramount for AI to do its job and for end users to experience greater productivity."

In other words, speech intelligibility should now be considered foundational for meeting spaces. Poor acoustics lead to poor data, which leads to poor outcomes.

“So, while AI is raising the bar for what these systems can do, it’s also raising the bar for how we design spaces,” Neto advised. “Integrators and designers need to think beyond the camera and the codec and start with the room itself. Because at the end of the day, if the AI can’t clearly understand what’s being said, everything else falls apart.”

Improving Products

Schyvinck believes AI can be a game changer when it comes to product development—with the right governance, policies, and planning. At her company, AI is not only assisting with the process, it's making product development more effective and efficient.

"AI has definitely helped accelerate many tasks, which can help us bring products to market faster," Schyvinck noted. "It is especially well suited for rapid prototyping. AI assists with learning and acquiring user feedback earlier in the development process, which is something we value a great deal at Shure because of our focus on customer input."

Schyvinck said Shure has been leveraging AI in its products for years, and it serves a critical role in today's UCC products. " AI helps with hybrid work pain points," she explained. "It enhances meeting intelligence, workflow automation, personalization, and analytics."

AI is certainly improving Biamp products—for example, cameras include auto zoom and focus as well as tilting capabilities, while AI noise reduction is helping to improve voice intelligibility in ways that users may not even realize. "Thinking broadly, AI is enabling products to become easier to use while also becoming more flexible," Andrulis said. "AI software, such as Biamp Launch, is now embedded into system programming, including auto setup and auto tuning.

"This is useful beyond just installation, as it can adapt to changes in the environment. As a result, the end user is getting a much more polished experience in a wider set of use cases," Andrulis added. "It’s all happening more efficiently and at lower cost, with overall better performance and without any overt action from individuals."

Predictions and Next Steps

AI has already made some pretty impressive technological strides. As Labuskes said, "While our eyes are on how AI is being used in practical AV applications, we're also tracking its potential to make huge shifts across the industry."

Coming soon, look for continued growth in Edge AI, which is the practice of running AI locally on AV devices instead of sending it to the cloud. And beyond that is Physical AI, which combines sensors and control systems with AI to create meeting rooms that essentially run themselves.

Van Hoy said the best is yet to come. "Today, AI can take care of many mundane tasks," he said. "As we go forward, it will be able to do more sophisticated things, including technical direct productions and allow voice control of AV systems for unattended use. The applications will continue to evolve, particularly in the routine applications where humans provide the least creative value."

Schyvinck has already seen the shift from static hardware to adaptive learning systems. "End users want meetings that automatically generate, track, and facilitate action items and tasks," she explained. "They want rooms that self-diagnose issues and trigger support workflows or even self-heal."

Green agreed that platforms that can flag anomalies in system behavior before a client even notices a problem are a "genuine operational win" for integrators and end users. "AI-enhanced knowledge management systems for system integrators and support technicians will be a game changer," he predicted.

Voice control in professional environments needs attention, Green said, mostly because consumer voice AI tech can't be used due to cybersecurity and privacy concerns. However, he expects agentic AI, which makes its own decisions and takes action, to have a significant impact on system interoperability. "It’s a wild frontier fraught with hazards but improving exponentially," he added. "That’s the space to watch right now."

A Word of Warning

For Neto, the future of AI in Pro AV is about better overall experiences, not features. The industry is heading toward environments that are context-aware spaces that "understand who’s in the room, what they’re trying to do, and adjust in real time without manual intervention."

However, that kind of AI integration should probably come with a warning sticker. "Just because we can automate everything doesn’t mean we should," Neto said. "There’s a balance between intelligent and intrusive. The winners won’t be the ones who cram in the most AI; they’ll be the ones who use it with purpose thoughtfully, transparently, and in ways that actually make human interaction better, not more complicated."

For Green, the IT manager is often the integrator's point of contact, and they are "extremely cautious" about introducing AI. "Cybersecurity is top of mind in these firms. AI poses new threats, often cleverly disguised," he explained. "It’s best to defer to predictable reliability and hold off on AI tricks in these environments. Sophisticated clients can see right through them."

While AI-driven diagnostics and remote monitoring are maturing, Green said the interoperability and standardization layer still needs improvement. "Integrated systems can be sourced from a dozen different manufacturers, and the AI features often live in proprietary ecosystems that don't talk to each other elegantly," he noted. "The industry needs either stronger open standards or deeper partnerships at the platform level before AI can reach its full potential in a fully integrated system."

Andrulis had his own warning—about unintended consequences. "As the systems become smarter, we need to recognize that our industry is about audio and video sensors," he said, "and as they become more widely used and data is processed more intelligently, there are valid concerns about surveillance or the misuse of personal information. Users may not even be aware it’s happening.

"The good news is that as we get more information, we can do even more wonderful things with that information, but that is assuming good intentions," he continued. "Bad actors can use that information in ways that do not benefit end users. There is a potential dark side to this paradigm and as an industry we need to be cognizant of that."

The July issue of SCN is now available. Be sure to download your FREE issue today!

Have you heard? AI has gone beyond a buzzword, as it dominates the AV industry, whether it is enhancing solutions or creating a path to more innovation. This month, we are joined by industry experts from Shure, Midwich, ASG, and many more to dive into how AI is shaping AV today... and tomorrow.

[How InfoComm Has Changed in Five Years]

Also in July:

• An inside look at accessibility on campus with ENCO.
• People on the move.
• Mission-critical video.
• Insight on ISO 42001 certification.
• Plus, the Integation Guide to House of Worship.

It's the perfect cure for the post-InfoComm, summertime blues. Download the July issue of SCN today!

Take a moment to consider all the disruptions we are facing in the broader context of the global economy—changing trade policies through tariffs, supply chain challenges linked to conflict in the Middle East, rising energy costs due to the same, climate change, aging workforces, and of course AI.

The last is perhaps the one that the Pro AV industry is contemplating the most. A quick review of the news coming out of NAB provides a firehose of announcements of the next wave of use cases for AI. In fact, there is a good amount to talk about there, as the exact applications within AV solution sets crystalize. We’ll get to that, but first let’s back up a moment. What exactly is the context?

Optimism or Pessimism?

Coming out of a muted 2025, which saw lower growth rates for GDP and Pro AV specifically, has everyone wondering how 2026 might fare. Starting with GDP, IMF estimates show some challenges, particularly once the Iranian conflict is factored in. Growth rates for the Middle East were cut fairly substantially, creating a ripple effect around the rest of the world.

Estimates now show GDP in 2026 growing 3.1%, down from 3.4% last year. This means a weaker context for Pro AV, as arguably there is less capital to be invested overall, even if technology may win a disproportionate share, as it often does.

The counterpoints to a pessimistic outlook aren’t hard to find. A quick search reveals continued growth in corporate profits, historically low jobless claims, low unemployment rates, and robust consumer spending. Each of those provides a good fundamental for Pro AV investment generally speaking.

Economists continue to talk about an experience economy, in which consumers’ discretionary spending shifts to "micro-luxuries." Witness travel, entertainment, and dining related outlays here. The challenging news is that data shows a slower rate of growth in normalized consumer spending since the peak of the pandemic recovery.

The U.S. World Bank estimates for global household consumption numbers are growing at a slower rate over the past several years and into 2026 once the data is normalized to 2015, rising only 2.7% in 2025. As an early indicator of downstream investment in technology, this could portend softness ahead.

Fortunately, since corporate profits are up, even if consumer spending weakens over the near term, there is room for investment, assuming executives do not also become cautious in light of rising costs. One indicator suggesting the contrary is the Purchase Manager’s Index, a gauge of corporate buying intent. As with any similar diffusion index, scores above 50 indicate growth; the Q1 result shows 52.5, a slight increase from last year.

With consumer spending growth down and corporate plans improving, economists suggest we are entering a late-stage economy wherein growth comes from corporate investments to improve operations and gain efficiencies, instead of one driven by consumers. This is perhaps a good sign for Pro AV, though with many projects being driven more by experiences, this is only partially positive.

Evaluating the Outlooks

With context in mind, let’s turn to the actual outlooks. According to AVIXA, 2025 was a low watermark for growth and 2026 will rebound a bit. Caretta Research shows similar, though with a bit more conservativeness. Both put overall Pro AV spending growth closer to 4%. Based on past differences between GDP and Pro AV, these figures may appear a bit low, but not out of keeping with a general climate of concern. A tepid year of growth, with perhaps an upside more toward 5% is reasonable.

Multi-source data from Q1 helps shed light on the trajectory so far. AVIXA’s AV Business Index, a diffusion index based on surveys submitted by AV professionals, shows a slight uptick in March to near 60. Those paying close attention will immediately notice that March is typically the highwater mark for a given year and should be taken with a grain of salt. Though one month doesn’t make the year, the tone that signal sets is a bit of a cautionary tale. Respondents did indicate rising costs as a chief concern, which echo in other data indicating that the impact of tariffs may be finally showing up in the data.

Turning to the Jetbuilt project management platform for AV dealers and installers offers another signal of a strong start to 2026. The total value of projects created on Jetbuilt increased 38% over the same period last year. While some of this is due to just the increasing usage of the platform, that is well above the baseline growth of 15% in project value for 2025. Thus, it is a clear sign of more projects in the pipeline at a higher value.

Here’s the bigger issue—while the average project values are increasing, the percentage of project costs from hardware is on the rise. While it hovered around 40% over the past few years, it shot up more than 50% in late 2025. This puts pressure on integrators from a margin perspective, as more of the revenue is consumed by hardware rather than markups or service. Once again, we have a potential signal of tariff impacts.

Two examples of the hardware cost increases felt by integrators can be found in data from PMA Research, a market research company focused on the display market. While a bit bouncy, the average prices in the Pro AV channel for both flat-panel displays and projectors have shown 10-20% spikes over the past several months. In the case of FPD and dvLED, this occurred in December with slight improvement since.

Projector prices have risen more steadily both for integrators and at the distributor level with increases more in the 25% range. Given that display prices had been dropping over the past several years due to a surge in inventories, this further supports the theory that inventory has diminished to the point where tariff impacts can be felt.

So where does this leave us as we come together at InfoComm to get a renewed pulse on the evolutions in AI? Here’s what we know: The volume and value of projects in the AV pipeline are showing good growth over last year. But project work may be less profitable for the channel as rising hardware costs eat up the budget. This will further require integrators to be creative in how they gain efficiencies to maintain margin.

Fortunately, AI may be poised to help provide process improvements. AI-powered design recommendation tools coming from project management platforms are emerging to help integrators create and deploy reference designs in a more efficient way.

For decades, innovation in the AV and collaboration industry has largely followed a familiar path.

Manufacturers build products. Consultants and integrators assemble those products into systems. End users compare and evaluate the proposed solutions, and eventually deploy what the market has made available.

Over time, that model has arguably become even more linear. As enterprise collaboration scaled, the industry moved further toward standardization, repeatability, and solutions designed for the “average user” and the “typical” room. That shift had good reasons behind it.

Standardization helped the industry scale. But it also made it easier to forget how differently real people and real organizations actually work.

More and more, the opportunity to contribute innovation value moved away from the many and into the hands of the largest and most resourced players, where scale and efficiency were greatest. And I’d propose that it is both a problem and an opportunity as we move further into an AI age of change and uncertainty.

I have never sat in the chair of an end-user technology manager, but I have spent much of my career pushing back against the status quo in how our industry operates and builds business models that serve more than the transaction itself. From that vantage point, I believe one thing very strongly in this moment: the end user community has more power to shape the future of collaboration than it exercises today.

The entire industry is hungry for direction. Manufacturers are trying to understand where AI-enabled value will actually land. Integrators are trying to determine how their role evolves. Consultants are trying to rethink what guidance looks like when best practice itself is changing. Everyone is trying to see around the corner of transformative shifts that may only be 12 to 24 months away in a legacy that operates on five-plus-year lifecycles.

Of course, that makes the role of a collaboration technology leader incredibly difficult. As the future of work, collaboration, and workplace experience becomes more intelligent, adaptive, and critical to organizational success, collaboration technology leaders cannot simply wait for the supply chain to bring them tomorrow’s answers.

They need help, but more importantly, they also need to help shape the answers. In this unprecedented environment, particularly where AI is shifting many elements of best practice back from ‘standardization’ and toward hyper-personalization, customer clarity can become a true force for innovation.

But my argument for deeper end-user engagement and leadership goes beyond specific problem-solving. Across the end-user community, there are organizations whose entire market position is built on the foundation of their capacity for transformative innovation. They have world-class research and development capabilities, defined digital transformation teams, data scientists, formal AI programs, innovation infrastructure, and cultures built around a mandate to fail fast, learn quickly, and move forward with intent.

And yet, too often, that innovation muscle is applied outward to the products, services, and markets the organization serves, while rarely being applied with the same intent to the internal operational ecosystems that power the organization. And as we well know, that very much applies to their collaboration infrastructure. Not only do we spend too little time fully understanding the needs and workflows of these collaboration power users to serve them, but we also fail to leverage the opportunity to learn from the innovation capabilities and best practices they maintain.

That matters because we, as the collaborative enablement industry, need those skills. From vendor to integrator to technology manager, innovation is not deeply embedded in our DNA. If we are going to remain relevant in the AI era, we need to learn, understand, and apply innovation far more deliberately.

Deliberate Innovation

So, I ask you to imagine an enterprise collaboration leader proactively convening three groups.

A combination of internal modern workplace stakeholders: real estate, HR, IT, AI, security, procurement, learning, workplace strategy, and others, with organizational context, technical imagination, and human workforce insight.

The most progressive external partners from across the supply chain: mainstream vendors with scale, emerging vendors with agility, integrators with delivery knowledge, consultants with strategic perspective, and service partners with operational understanding.

A selection of the organization’s own innovation leaders, both as catalysts for innovation itself and as users with lived experience of what is broken, missing, or possible in their own collaboration workflows.

Not for a one-off workshop. But as contributors to an ongoing strategy, structure, and process of ideation, experimentation, validation, and iteration. A group that could explore critical questions, such as whether AI has created new opportunities to:

>> Allow collaboration spaces to adapt more intelligently to equip different meeting types?

>> Offer utilization data, employee experience signals, and business workflows that could be interpreted together to build entirely new operational models?

>> Enable support models that become predictive and proactive rather than reactive?

>> Reduce many of the frictions and effort we currently face before, during, and after people come together?

This is where the process of innovation becomes less like procurement and more like chemistry. The point is to create an environment to “play” with different technology and human ingredients. To discover catalytic combinations that, when brought together, might release transformational new energy into the collaboration process.

Of course, just as in chemistry, not every combination will create a useful reaction. Most will fail—that’s the nature of innovative explorations. But occasionally, that experimentation will create something far more valuable than the sum of its parts. It may even become the foundation for a whole new line of exploration and opportunity that serves every participant well beyond the original initiative.

The Broader Collaboration Ecosystem

The challenge, of course, is that this is not an insignificant undertaking.

There are models that point in this direction. Microsoft’s Hive is one well-known example. So, there is precedent and business case. But examples like this remain too rare across the broader collaboration ecosystem.

In my recent conversations across the end user community, very few reject the value or need for this kind of approach. Their hesitation is rarely because the concept lacks merit. More so, it is because of everything that would need to change internally to make it viable.

Undoubtedly, this type of innovation model requires the supply chain to evolve. But frankly, we all know most manufacturers, integrators, and consultants would jump at the opportunity to support a serious initiative like this with their best customers if a true win-win partnership is on the table.

The AV and UC supply chain has for years sought to offer more service-centric models, risk-sharing models, managed lifecycle approaches, and outcome-based relationships. We know AI now makes many of those models far more viable than ever. Some past efforts absolutely fell short because the offerings were immature. But many also struggled because customers were simply not ready or equipped to buy, fund, govern, or evaluate them differently.

That is why I would argue the first work starts with the internal foundations on the customer side. Procurement approaches. Capital planning models. Security review processes. Real estate strategies. Support expectations. Sustainability priorities. Risk tolerances. Departmental silos.

So, if we believe that collaboration powers innovation and innovation creates competitive advantage, in a world where the rate of change in markets has never been faster, and amid all the other priorities the AI era is creating, is enhanced innovation capability seen at senior executive level as a distraction, or as an imperative?

That matters because that executive sponsorship is where the silos driving the lack of confidence in the models I describe can be overcome.

It’s here that the leadership opportunity begins! Building consensus, finding advocates, identifying the internal and external thought leadership to create momentum, connecting collaboration enablement to the bigger organizational priorities already on the table.

None of that is easy. But what is new is that there may never have been a stronger story to tell, or a moment of greater willingness across organizations to listen to progressive ideas for change. This is a moment of leadership opportunity and strategic relevance that many in this industry have been seeking for their entire careers.

So the practical challenge I put to the end user community is this: in moments of uncertainty, the party that controls demand has more power to lead than it often recognizes. You have an opportunity to build a plan, articulate a vision, and start designing the conditions and initial steps required to drive the experimental collaborations that will underpin the future of your career, of this industry, and of your organization.

I do not pretend there is a single recipe or destination for this shift. Each organization will have different risk profiles, cultures, governance models, and collaboration patterns. But the message is clear.

For leaders within organizations where innovation, change, and human collaboration are central to future success - do not wait for the market to define your future. Let’s find the ways to invite the right people into the room, bring the real challenges and opportunities to the table, and create the conditions for better answers to emerge.

In the AI era, the most valuable end user collaboration leaders may not be those who simply buy the best technology, but those who become the best collaborators in shaping what that technology, and the human and digital innovation ecosystem around it, need to become.

For an industry still learning how to innovate, let alone at the speed of AI, that kind of customer leadership may be exactly the catalyst we collectively need.

First, I would like to define the workplace. It is wherever you work. That could be in a corporate environment, a home office, a classroom, an auditorium, a sports venue, a museum, a government office, a transportation facility, a control room, a healthcare environment, hospitality, on the road, or in the field—you name it.

Hopefully, your environment is controlled with the optimal acoustics for speech intelligibility (near and far) and has the ideal lighting so the images on displays are clear. Yes, I know that’s a bold statement, but this is our industry, and if we want our collaboration spaces to enable positive outcomes and enhance productivity, it’s something to continuously work towards.

There’s no doubt that collaboration in the workplace has dramatically changed in the past few years. But this is no longer a conversation about the percentage of employees who are hybrid or remote, or how many days they work in the “office.” Remote participants could be vendors or invited speakers. Collaboration also means sharing content so everyone in the room can clearly view it on the displays, hear all participants, and share ideas.

Collaboration and The AI Factor

Artificial intelligence is a massive topic. It’s akin to talking about the impact of the World Wide Web in the late '80s and '90s, only bigger and more unknown.

At AV Technology, we’re going to home in on the potential and ever-evolving impact AI can have on collaboration in the workplace. My goal is to share ideas, inspire, educate, and sometimes challenge conventional thinking.

We’re launching the AV Technology Thought Leader Series on Collaboration and AI with Byron Tarry. He is the founder and chief transformation officer of NΞXXT, which helps individuals and organizations build collaboration-centric transformation that is measurable, responsible, and built to last. Tarry has more than 30 years in the AV and collaboration technologies realm, including nearly a decade as CEO of global AV integrator GPA. He brings a rare combination of strategic perspective and hands-on understanding of what makes innovation and change stick at scale. He will regularly contribute thought leadership articles for us. And, having spent some time with him, I am sure he will get you thinking outside the box.

Tarry is a frequent speaker on AI and collaboration and will be presenting The SPRINT at InfoComm, a hands-on innovation experience designed to help the AV and collaboration industry learn how to turn AI opportunities into practical outcomes. We connected at Integrated Systems Europe, where he presented on the topic of AI. I invited him to deliver our keynote at the AV/IT Summit in New York City on Aug. 5, The AI Moment for the Collaborative Workplace.

We’re thrilled to welcome Tarry into our circle of trusted contributors.

The distinction between broadcast and professional AV is blurring as the two worlds converge and overlap, creating a new era in content creation that benefits both markets.

Historically, broadcast-quality production required dedicated studios, specialized engineering teams, SDI-based infrastructure, and significant capital investment. Today, many of those barriers are coming down. But the end goal remains the same—to produce high-quality content that looks good, helps deliver important messages, and fosters engagement while being cost-effective and easy to use.

Corporate and education customers are increasingly expected to create, deliver, and distribute high-quality video content at speed, whether for executive communications, training, education, live productions, hybrid events, product launches, or customer and student engagement. As a result, these end users are turning to technologies that combine the reliability and image quality of broadcast with the flexibility and accessibility of AV. This creates new markets, customers, and opportunities for those in both broadcast and Pro AV.

Interest is growing in solutions including budget-friendly studio cameras with expandable future pathways and PTZ options that incorporate the cinematic look, zoom, and AI-based technologies.

The Drivers

Several trends are accelerating this convergence. AV-over-IP is moving video and audio transmission away from dedicated media and cabling toward standard IT networks. This gives organizations more flexible production environments and broader ways to deliver content across rooms, campuses, and remote locations.

At the same time, remote and cloud-based production tools are reducing the need for physical control rooms, fixed studios, and specialized editing suites. Teams can now switch, manage, and edit content from virtually anywhere, lowering both operational complexity and cost.

[Sony Electronics to Launch Two Compact, Lightweight 4K PTZ Cameras at InfoComm 26]

AI-powered capabilities are also playing a critical role. Intelligent features such as AI auto framing, tracking, and enhanced autofocus, seen in Sony’s latest PTZ cameras, are helping non-technical or less-experienced users produce more professional results with less manual input. These capabilities are especially important in corporate, education, and faith environments, where internal teams or volunteers may not have traditional broadcast expertise but still need to deliver polished, consistent content using intuitive technologies.

Video Becomes Central

This evolution is visible in the growing use of PTZ cameras across auditoriums, mixed-use spaces, lecture halls, studios, and meeting environments. Equipment is becoming smarter, easier to deploy, and better suited to multipurpose use cases. Instead of building production around highly specialized facilities, organizations can create scalable video ecosystems that support everything from simple internal messaging to sophisticated live productions.

As video becomes central to how organizations communicate, thought leadership, internal messaging, and education are becoming more dependent on production capabilities. Using the latest technologies, end users can now create high-quality content quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively with fewer barriers and resources, making them better positioned to inform, influence, and engage their audiences now and into the future.

DVIGear has unleashed a new AI agent integration for its DisplayNet platform. Introducing DisplayNet Connect for AI Agents for AV over IP signal distribution platforms. DisplayNet Connect lets AI assistants and agent frameworks configure, control, and troubleshoot DisplayNet systems through natural language, leveraging the DisplayNet API. The product is built on Model Context Protocol (MCP) for broad compatibility with leading agent platforms such as Claude, OpenAI Codex, and Gemini CLI. The underlying integration approach is protocol-agnostic and can be extended to other agent interfaces as the ecosystem evolves.

[Day 2 AV/IT Interoperability: SDVoE Alliance]

DVIGear’s DisplayNet platform, which is built on the SDVoE standard, powers AV extension, switching, multiview, and video wall applications across enterprise, government, education, and broadcast environments. With DisplayNet Connect for AI Agents, developers and integrators will be able to query system state, generate routing and video wall configurations, build custom integrations and user interfaces, and analyze logs—all using natural language. The result is a dramatic reduction in the time required to take a DisplayNet system from rack-up to production.

“DisplayNet has always been about giving integrators a more flexible and intelligent way to move AV signals over standard IP networks,” said Steven Barlow, president of DVIGear. “DisplayNet Connect for AI Agents is the next logical step. We are taking the parts of an AV over IP project that have traditionally required deep API expertise—writing integrations, building control UIs, debugging issues in the field—and making them accessible through the same AI tools our customers already use every day.”

DisplayNet Connect for AI Agents is designed to compress workflows that previously required days of custom development into minutes. Typical applications include generating integration code and control interfaces from natural-language descriptions of the desired behavior; configuring routing, multiview layouts and video walls without manually programming the underlying API; and diagnosing system issues by allowing AI agents to read and interpret DisplayNet logs in real time. Because DisplayNet Connect speaks directly to the DisplayNet management server, organizations gain AI-assisted workflows without giving up the interoperability, performance and security that come with a standards-based AV over IP platform.

Walk through the floor of any trade show today, or flip the pages of a trade journal, and you will find that "AI" has become the AV industry’s most pervasive marketing adjective. It is touted as a panacea for our industry’s most chronic ailments.

There is a seductive premise taking root in the C-suites of global integration and AV manufacturing firms: If AI can draft a scope of work (SOW), generate a Python script in seconds, or write grammatically correct marketing copy, we can finally decouple our growth from the scarcity of senior engineering talent. We can, supposedly, hire novices and use AI to "level them up" to expert status instantly.

This is a strategic error. AI is a revolutionary tool for efficiency, but its value is directly proportional to the user’s existing expertise. When an AV firm uses AI as a substitute for experience rather than an enhancement of it, they are accumulating "competency debt" that eventually comes due in the form of system failures, truck rolls, and tarnished reputations.

Spot the Difference

To understand the risk, we must first distinguish between the two types of AI currently reshaping our industry. The first is what we might call deterministic AI algorithms. This is the "black box" technology we’ve used for years: acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) in a DSP, auto-framing logic in a 4K camera, or background noise suppression in Microsoft Teams. These are narrow systems trained for specific tasks. They require configuration, not prompting. They are highly reliable because they don’t "think;" instead, they filter based on set parameters.

The second, and more volatile, species is the Large Language Model (LLM), driven by neural network computational systems like GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini. Unlike the narrow algorithms in our hardware, an LLM is a probabilistic engine. It doesn't follow a hard-coded logic tree of "If X, then Y." Instead, it predicts the next most likely "token" in a sequence based on vast amounts of training data. However, because it relies on probability rather than physical reality, it lacks an inherent compass for technical truth.

The difference between an expert and a novice is most visible in the "prompting gap." In the era of GenAI, your domain vocabulary is your programming language.

When an entry-level technician asks an AI to "write a scope of work for a 10-person conference room," the AI provides a beautifully formatted, professional-sounding document. To the novice, it looks perfect. But to the veteran, it may be a liability. It might omit EDID management, ignore heat load calculations for the rack, or fail to specify the PoE+ requirements for the network switch.

Contrast this with the expert’s prompt: "Draft a SOW for a high-impact boardroom using a Q-SYS Core 110f, Shure MXA920 arrays, and a Dante-backed network. Ensure the commissioning section includes speech privacy testing, 802.1X authentication protocols, and AES67 stream verification."

The expert isn't just chatting with a bot—they are applying technical guardrails. AI is used to skip the "blank page" phase, achieving a 30% productivity gain while maintaining 100% technical accuracy. The novice, lacking that vocabulary, accepts a "hallucination" as a standard.

A Lack of Trust

The greatest danger in the novice-plus-AI model is what researchers call the "trust trap." LLMs are designed to be helpful and confident, even when they are fundamentally wrong. In a technical field like Pro AV, this leads to plausible nonsense.

An AI might confidently provide a string of API commands for a control processor that looks syntactically correct but contains a command that does not exist in the current firmware version. The expert sees this and thinks, "That command doesn't exist in this API; I need to verify the documentation." The novice sees this and thinks, "The AI gave me the code, so it must be the solution."

Without the internal filter of years spent in equipment racks, the novice cannot distinguish between a brilliant shortcut and a hallucination. They treat the AI as a senior mentor—an infallible source of truth—when the expert knows it should be treated as a junior assistant whose work must be carefully graded.

This isn't just theory: Recent data confirms the emergence of an "efficiency dividend." Top-tier professionals using AI see an average 25% increase in speed for complex tasks. These figures are based on a landmark 2023–2024 study conducted by Harvard Business School in collaboration with Boston Consulting Group (BCG), as well as a 2025 global productivity survey by SAP.

However, 2025 benchmarks from firms like Vectara show that for specialized technical tasks, LLMs still hallucinate at rates between 15% and 35%, incurring an “accuracy tax.” In an industry where a single transposed IP address or an under-powered PoE port can cause a system-wide blackout, a 35% error rate is not an acceptable trade-off for speed. While a novice might appear 40% more productive on paper by generating documents quickly, the likelihood of them introducing a critical error into a system design is nearly 20 percentage points higher than an expert using the same tool.

Empower Your A-Team

For the principal of an AV firm, the takeaway is clear: Do not use AI to make your C-Team look like your A-Team. Instead, use it to empower your A-Team and allow them to realize their world-class skills while simultaneously delivering astonishing productivity. To ensure future success, firms should be funding AI training for their most experienced and qualified team members, because they are the only ones who can spot the 20% of the output that will break the system.

When a novice relies on AI to bridge their lack of experience, they may be gaining speed, but they are also accelerating their arrival at a wrong conclusion. Ensure your new hires master the essentials of AV; you can't vet a machine’s logic if you haven't yet mastered the fundamentals yourself.

As we move deeper into 2026, the gap between the firms that use AI to enhance expertise and those that use it to hide a lack of expertise will widen. The former will see unprecedented productivity gains and scale, while the latter will find themselves explaining to a client why their AI-designed boardroom is dead on arrival.

Efficiency is the byproduct of AI, but judgment remains the unique product of the human professional. Firms that forget this may find their reputations "hallucinated" away.

NΞXXT is excited to announce The SPRINT, taking place on Thursday, June 18, from 1:00 – 5:00 p.m., at InfoComm 2026. The new hands-on innovation experience is designed to help the AV and collaboration industry learn how to turn AI opportunities into practical outcomes.

The four-hour team-based sprint challenges participants to move from AI ideas to real prototypes, with top teams presenting live at AVIXA Xchange the following day.

The team-based innovation session is built on a simple premise: AI innovation is a team sport, and the strongest outcomes come from diversity of perspective.

Participants will work in small, intentionally diverse teams. Each will be assigned a “catalyst challenge,” and tasked with building a tangible response – whether a prototype, service concept, workflow, business model, or other practical expression of an AI-enabled opportunity.

“AI has created a moment where everyone is talking about innovation, but few within our industry have ever formally been taught the skills, structures, and best practices of HOW to do so,” said Byron Tarry, Founder and Chief Transformation Officer at NΞXXT. “The SPRINT is about changing that.”

From Ideas to Impact

Participants will learn by doing, combining their own skills with the collective knowledge, tools, and perspectives of others across the room.

The emphasis is not on polished perfection, but on rapid experimentation, creative use of AI tools, and practical exploration of what is possible when teams simply start building.

Top teams from Thursday will then be invited to present their outputs on the AVIXA Xchange LIVE stage on Friday, June 19, from 12:00 – 1:00 p.m., giving the wider InfoComm audience a front-row view into what industry innovation under pressure can produce.

“The SPRINT reflects our commitment to evolving how our industry learns and grows,” said Annette Sandler, Senior Director, Live Content, U.S./Canada, AVIXA, producer of InfoComm. “By creating space for hands-on collaboration, experimentation, and shared discovery, we are helping the community build the skills and confidence needed to navigate the AI era.”

Who Should Attend?

The SPRINT is open to participants from across the AV and collaboration ecosystem, vendors, integrators, consultants, and end users, with a strong emphasis on attracting diversity of role, experience, and perspective.

Participants are also encouraged to attend in mentor-mentee pairs, bringing together the combination of strategic leadership and frontline technical AI expertise so critical to progress in this moment.

Key Takeaways

Building on the success of a similar format introduced at Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), The SPRINT is designed as more than a one-off experience. Participants will leave with:

>> Greater confidence in their ability to contribute to and shape innovation

>> A tangible team output such as a prototype, workflow, service concept or proof-of-concept artifact

>> Hands-on experience of a practical innovation sprint methodology they can reuse

>> A clearer understanding of how AI tools can be used not only to ideate, but also to prototype, validate, and communicate new possibilities quickly

“The goal is not just what gets built in the room,” Tarry said. “It is what people can take back into their organizations, a way of working that makes innovation more accessible, more repeatable, and ultimately more impactful.”

Registration and Availability

Participation in The SPRINT will have limited capacity, but is open to any and all “AI progressive” InfoComm attendees, from Front Office strategists to Front Line AI practitioners.

Full session details and registration are available here.

The session is FREE for attendees with an InfoComm Premier or Essentials Education Pass. Other interested parties, please reach out to NΞXXT directly at info@nexxtnow.com.

InfoComm is first and foremost a product and solutions show.

That is not a criticism. It is part of its value. Hundreds of exhibitors will arrive ready to showcase what they have built, what they believe differentiates them, and why their platform, feature set, product, or service today is better than the next.

But for end-user technology managers, that familiar rhythm also creates a challenge.

In an AI era, walking the show floor only through the lens of product comparison is not enough. Speeds and feeds, performance, product capability, etc., still matter. But the bigger question is whether those products, platforms, vendors, and partners are helping you prepare for a future that is changing faster than traditional technology lifecycles were ever designed to absorb.

So, my challenge to the end-user community at InfoComm 2026 is: do not just attend the show looking for better technology. Attend, looking for better questions, better signals, and better partners for what comes next.

Remember this: the industry exists today and will evolve tomorrow to serve YOU, not the other way around. Every investment made, every solution built, every platform developed, every service model refined, every financial model constructed is ultimately intended to help end-user organizations solve real problems and deliver real value. So, in a moment where the entire industry is looking for answers, your perspective has more power to activate change and innovation than perhaps you recognize. So, take this moment to lead, to be more proactive than you have ever been.

Tarry’s Recommendations for End-User Technology Managers Attending InfoComm

With that perspective in mind, here are some recommendations for you to consider as you prepare for the show.

Let’s start with the bigger picture. “Collaboration” technology is no longer just an island underneath IT. In many organizations, every aspect of the “office” now exists first and foremost because of the proposition of collaboration enablement. People come together physically to connect, create, align, decide, learn, and innovate—better than they could remotely. That means the meeting room can no longer be viewed solely as a tactical technology environment. It sits within a much larger conversation about workplace culture, productivity, and business performance.

As you walk the show, think beyond the room. Ask how the collaborative office should work. Ask how your role now potentially enables the outcomes your C-suite actually cares about. Because what they want is not more technology. They want better innovation and ideation, better collaboration, better human engagement, better use of space, better decisions, and better business outcomes.

Try to enter the show with a clear understanding of the real foundational frictions you face in that objective today. Not only technology frictions, but financial and procurement frictions, infrastructure and lifecycle challenges, sustainability concerns, support burdens, user adoption gaps, and the limitations of your legacy deployment model.

Then look at those challenges through a different question: could AI change this?

Could AI help with support? Could it improve room utilization? Could it personalize collaboration experiences? Could it help users choose the right space for the right task? Could it reduce waste, improve lifecycle planning, or help you manage complexity at scale?

Then change your approach. Don’t wait for vendors to tell you what AI means. Bring your own questions and use the show to seek and test who is thinking seriously about the same problems you are.

That means listening less and driving more!

Most of us recognise that yesterday’s business models, rigid product architectures, and limited accountability models were not built for tomorrow’s realities. So be vocal about what YOU need to manage the risks, uncertainty, and opportunity ahead. Challenge the industry as to how it can better serve the actual complexity of your organization.

In doing so, the responses you receive will likely tell you a lot. The value of today’s product capability has never meant less on its own. What matters more is whether the vendor, product, and platform show signs of being agile, progressive, and capable of evolving with you. In the answers you receive, ask yourself who gives you confidence—not just in what they sell today, but in how they think about tomorrow. If they don’t inspire you, if their front-line sellers can’t articulate this, then that tells you about where they are on that journey.

Tarry's Two Challenges

My suggestion: Try to come out of the show with at least two signals.

First, identify a mainstream vendor whose answers give you the confidence that they can overcome the natural inertia of their size and scale.

Second, try to find an emerging vendor, perhaps in a small booth far from the center of gravity, whose thinking challenges you. Their product may not yet meet every enterprise requirement, but their perspective may help you rethink the bets you make.

Additionally, I’ll challenge you to look for opportunities and pathways for “collaborative experimentation.”

The future of collaboration will not be built by one vendor, one integrator, one consultant, or one technology manager alone. It will be shaped through ideation, exploration, testing, and application by diverse teams with different expertise. So, try to leave InfoComm with some new collaborators, not just new brochures. Consciously seek out people and organizations willing to invest time WITH YOU in labs, pilots, shared learning, and open exploration. Certainly, that’s a part of what I’ll be looking for, so feel free to make me your first Conversation!

Finally, I’d propose you focus on looking for the “how.” There is no shortage of armchair expertise around WHY AI matters. But conviction in that is no longer the problem for most. The greater need is practical application. Who has tested something? Who has learned something? Who can explain what worked, what failed, what changed, and what they would do differently next time? All to help provide you a roadmap for tomorrow's approach and next steps, what it will take to eventually get to that future potential.

So let’s all try to enter the show with a different mindset. We know the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. The future will not be found by walking the same aisles, asking the same questions, and expecting different outcomes. It will belong to those who use the show not just to see what is new, but to imagine, test, and shape what is next.

Einstein was clearly ahead of his time on many fronts, but even he may not have fully understood the future relevance of this quote to today’s realities: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

In an AI-driven world, where knowledge is abundant and instantly accessible, the differentiator shifts to how it is used, how ideas are formed, challenged, and ultimately turned into something real.

At a business level, I’d propose that the activation of imagination shows up as innovation. Innovation is the engine of change, the mechanism through which organizations adapt, differentiate, and compete. Whether the goal is growth, efficiency, resilience, or market leadership, the path almost always runs through the ability to turn ideas into outcomes.

That has always been true. What is changing is the speed - and the expectation. For years, innovation has been constrained, not by a lack of ideas, but by the ability to pursue them. Time, cost, risk, and structure meant only a small subset of ideas could be explored, typically by small “expert” groups tasked with doing so on behalf of the organization. AI is removing much of that constraint. It is compressing the distance between idea and implementation, accelerating experimentation and iteration, and expanding who can participate. What was once limited is becoming abundant.

However, despite how we often describe it, innovation has never really been a solo act. While initial ideas may originate with individuals, they are refined, validated, and scaled through interaction, through the exchange of diverse perspectives, the testing of assumptions, and the realities of execution. If innovation at its core is not an individual capability, then as it becomes more distributed, more continuous, and more central to competitiveness, the quality of the collaboration behind it becomes a defining factor in whether organizations succeed or fail.

And this is why the role of the collaboration industry needs to be reconsidered.

Moving Beyond Tactical

Historically, we have defined our value in terms of enabling communication. We build the rooms, deploy the platforms, and integrate the systems that allow people to connect, and we have done that well. (Indeed, so much so, it has become increasingly tactical and commoditised). But in an environment where innovation is central to performance, and collaboration is central to innovation, that definition is no longer sufficient.

We know that simply bringing people together does not guarantee better thinking. It does not ensure better decisions, faster learning, or more effective outcomes. We see that every day in the variability of meeting quality across organizations. Those outcomes require something more deliberate. Historically, delivering that has been difficult, but AI is now providing the most intelligent, collaborative, and adaptive foundation for change that we have ever had. We are at the dawn of an opportunity to build environments, physical, digital, and increasingly intelligent, that do not just host interaction but can actively contribute to and improve it.

The Dawn of Opportunity

To be clear, AI is expanding what is possible, but it is also exposing a gap. While most organizations have invested heavily in collaboration technology, they are still not equipped to consistently turn an abundance of ideas into outcomes at speed. If organizations need to build innovation as a core, distributed capability, that requires more than technology. It requires the ability to enable effective, repeatable, collaborative innovation across the business.

That is both the challenge and the opportunity in front of the industry. It is the shift from delivering collaborative environments that are passive… to enabling systems that are actively supportive. Systems that can potentially help guide discussions, structure decision-making, surface relevant insight, and help teams move more efficiently from conversation to action. Systems that embed best practices of collaboration and innovation rather than leaving “good” to chance.

While collaboration will always extend beyond innovation, in an era where innovation becomes THE primary driver of value, helping organizations improve how they innovate, how they move from idea to decision to execution, creates impact that is not just incremental, but compounding. The result? Not just efficiency, but meaningful differentiation. Real competitive advantage. And ultimately, sustained economic impact.

And that is where our relevance as an industry should expand. Not because collaboration is new, but because its role is fundamentally changing. If we recognize and act on this opportunity, it shifts the industry’s model, from one defined by transactional delivery and competitive pricing, toward one aligned with accountability for outcomes and participation in value creation.

But to achieve this vision, there is a parallel truth we need to confront. The model through which our industry has historically innovated is not built for this moment. Innovation has largely originated at the vendor level, been delivered as features through the supply chain, and presented to customers as capabilities to adopt. That linear model struggles when the real challenge is not access to tools, but how those tools are applied, integrated, and evolved within complex, real-world environments.

So, if collaboration becomes the infrastructure of innovation, then the way we innovate as an industry must reflect that. It must become more collaborative. And that means moving beyond a model where innovation is created for customers, toward one where it is created with them. Where end user organizations play a more active role in shaping solutions. Where integrators extend beyond deployment into orchestration and continuous refinement. And where vendors enable more open, adaptable platforms that support this shared process.

In other words, the industry must embrace the same collaborative innovation discipline that our customers are now being forced to develop. Because the connection is direct. The more effectively we build this capability within our own ecosystem, the more proficient, credible, and valuable we will become in helping organizations do the same. The opportunity is immense. But it will not be realized through incremental change, or by any one part of the industry acting alone. It will be defined by how effectively we come together to build what comes next.

AI is Compressing the Very Premise of Time

We know there is a natural tendency to overestimate the impact of technological change in the short term and underestimate it in the long term. In our industry, that often leads to inertia, a tendency to wait and see. But in this moment, even that framing feels unstable. The pace of AI is compressing the very premise of time. In the CAPEX-driven cycles we are used to, what once felt like a normal horizon now feels like an eternity. Now is not the time to wait.

While certainly there are many in that camp, I also believe that for many across the industry, the “why” behind the need for transformation ahead is not the real challenge. Amid infinite commentary and rhetoric around AI-driven change, the harder questions, the pressure to act is far more practical. It’s about “where to begin”:

• What actually needs to change, across both technology and human capability, to move beyond the constraints of the past?
• Who will lead the necessary shifts in mindset, in how we define value, and in how we build the operational capabilities required across vendors, integrators, and customer organizations?
• How do we fund and scale new skillsets, new models of experimentation, and new business approaches that move us from project-based delivery, bound to the speed of the physical, toward continuous, outcome-driven services that evolve at the speed of digital?
• And perhaps most critically, when do these shifts move beyond early adopters and begin to scale?

This article is the first of a series intended to explore those questions in practical terms, what the gaps actually are, where capability needs to be built, and how the industry can move from delivering collaboration… to enabling innovation at scale.

Like the organizations we serve, we need structured environments to explore ideas for industry transformation. We need real investment in experimentation. We need more collaborative and diverse partnerships, within and beyond the industry. And so hopefully this series can play some part, be some form of catalyst to that.

Because if innovation is the engine of competitiveness, and collaboration is the engine of innovation, then the conclusion is hard to avoid. We are closer to the center of value creation than ever before. The question is whether we are ready to take the steps to operate there.

Back home in the refreshed Central Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center, with additional exhibits spread across the North Hall and West Hall, the 2026 NAB Show closed its show floor on April 23. According to show officials, there were more than 58,000 registered attendees, an increase from last year. Almost half were first-time attendees, and more than 20% of registered attendees were international, with 146 countries represented. Plus, there were 132 first-time exhibitors. Beyond the numbers, here were a few trends I observed.

[We Saw Phish at The Sphere, and the Video Content Had Us Bouncing around the Room]

Acknowledge the influencers.

Whether you call them creators or influencers, the important thing is that you call them. NAB 2026 put an emphasis on the creator community and with good reason: It's healthy and it's growing. I attended "How Fortune 500 Brands Are Betting on Creators," while SCN's Wayne Cavadi covered “State of the Creator Economy” at the Creator Lab, an area devoted to the creator community that celebrated its third year at NAB.

During “State of the Creator Economy," Alessandro Bogliari, co-founder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing Factory, explained the appeal of online influences. “The creator economy is a people business,” he said. “It’s a friend I’ve never met, and I follow them because you can see part of myself in them. AI simply cannot replace that.”

Of course, AI was also part of the discussion. Natalie Jarvey, editor of Ankler Media’s "Like & Subscribe" newsletter, said creators who once saw GenAI as a threat have now embraced it as a tool for making creative content. That said, she acknowledged it still has a different look and lacks the human touch. “Brands are all-in on everything AI these days: the good, the bad and the ugly,” agreed fellow panelist Pierre-Loïc Assayag, co-founder and CEO of Traackr.

Meanwhile, in "How Fortune 500 Brands Are Betting on Creators," Jennifer Cho, chief customer officer at CreatorIQ, said creator marketing now delivers more ROI than the traditional marketing funnel. That's why major businesses are using creators to drive social media campaigns. Brendan Ittelson, chief ecosystem officer at Zoom, said measurement and metrics are critical, and it's important to be able to define customer success and identify audiences.

How creators will impact the Pro AV industry remains to be seen. But between them and younger viewers embracing 9:16 content for shorter content on their mobile devices, there is the potential for serious disruption in the production status quo. That means new tools, new techniques, and new workflows—and customers looking to integrators for answers.

There's a new buzzword.

AI is still making the most noise in the industry, but another buzzword has quietly become part of an awful lot of conversations: security. Whether you call it network security, IP security, or cybersecurity, minimizing the risk of intrusion or cyberattacks via Pro AV hardware and software is now a point of emphasis. And just to bring this to a full buzzword circle, AI is a great tool for bad actors.

"Every device on-prem is a potential liability," agreed Frank Zovko, VP of engineering at AI-Media. The company used NAB 2026 to introduce its new LEXI Voice Encoder and LEXI Text Encoder for use in the creation of written and spoken captions, transcripts, and translations. Zovko said the company did its due diligence for security, with updated systems, an overhauled web interface, SOC 2 compliance, and more. AI-Media has also committed to quarterly updates for added security protections.

Security was top of mind for BeckTV at NAB, where the company launched BeckFlow, its web-based, broadcast-centric schematic documentation platform that doesn't rely on traditional CAD workflows. Matt Weiss, VP business development for BeckTV, has noticed there is more security awareness in the industry; in fact, he mentioned that BeckFlow is SOC 2 compliant and has authentication features.

NETGEAR is so serious about security that it acquired Exium, a cybersecurity company, last year. There was less concern about security when connectivity was defined by an HDMI cable, but today's IP-based workflows has "raised the bar for the need for security," according to NETGEAR AV's John Henkel. He advised keeping AV separated from other IT assets on its own network.

AI is getting some serious training.

"We've gotta use AI."

I wonder how many companies have declared mandates like this—and then promptly left their teams to their own devices to figure out how to do just that. Thankfully, I'm happy to report that there are Pro AV manufacturers that are avoiding vague "and it's got AI" declarations and really focusing their AI efforts into meaningful products and workflows.

For example, I learned about Shure's Action Isolator software during a Sunday afternoon session in the Broadcast Engineering and IT Conference. Shure's Chad Wiggins, associate VP of innovation, and Brent Shumard, senior staff acoustic engineer, had a fireside chat with John Clark, NAB's chief innovation officer and SVP of emerging technology about why audio has lagged behind with AI.

Beyond a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mentality, Shumard said audio is often messy and chaotic. However, AI adoption for processing is starting. Action Isolator uses AI to remove unwanted sounds. So, if you're shooting a basketball game, you can have the sounds of the basketball hitting the rim, dribbling the ball down the court, and even the squeaking of the sneakers all on one fader, minimizing the sounds of the crowd, band, or PA announcer.

How does Action Isolator do it? The first part is the right hardware. Shure's DCA901 broadcast microphone array offers eight channels of audio with very steerable pickup zones that can identify and prioritize key sounds in real time. But the secret sauce is training. The company is currently training the software for basketball, baseball, and hockey. Shumard said the trick is getting clean audio data for training the AI.

On the video side, Vizrt introduced AI Keyer at the show. Vizrt's chief marketing officer, Chris Black, said the company wants its AI applications to be transformative and capable of simplifying human workflows through agentic AI. AI Keyer is certainly designed to simplify VR and XR workflows, because it enables a production to change backgrounds and insert graphics without a greenscreen or special lighting. Indoor, outdoor, on a set, on location—it doesn't matter.

Again, AI training is the key. Vizrt is training its AI to recognize human shapes, maintaining the key while allowing your talent to walk and chew gum (and handle objects) at the same time. Vizrt is also working on training the AI to recognize hats and hairstyles, too.

Is it perfect? No. But like previous technological leaps in our industry, this first generation is the worst it's ever going to look. And it's already more than good enough for prime time. All I'm saying is that if you've been keeping extra stock of green paint for the cyc, you might as well use it now, because you probably won't need it in the near future.

Last year, the Pro AV voice was pretty clear: the industry was moving away from isolated hardware decisions and toward networked, software-aware, IT-aligned systems.

AV Technology’s “25 AV/IT Thought Leaders on the State of Networked AV” captured that mood well. The core themes were open standards, interoperability, cloud management, AI-assisted operations, phased modernization, and the continued convergence of AV and IT. In short, the market was saying: stop thinking in boxes, start thinking in platforms.

As we move through 2026, those core themes have hardened. It feels like operating in reality. AVIXA’s 2026 trends coverage points to security, AV/IT/AI convergence, interoperability, sustainability, and immersive displays as defining themes for the year. Futuresource adds an important nuance from ISE 2026: the market is shifting away from hype and moves toward governance, lifecycle management, compliance, and practical deployment.

On Standards

The biggest change in the last six months is that modern networked AV is no longer just about moving signals over IP. It is, noticeably, much more about running AV as an IT-governed service. In the 2025 AV Technology article, thought leaders emphasized open standards such as IPMX and SMPTE ST 2110, cloud-native management, predictive maintenance, and the need to avoid vendor lock-in. In 2026, that has become more concrete. AIMS used ISE 2026 to formally launch IPMX as a certifiable standard, a meaningful step for buyers who want interoperable, standards-led deployments rather than proprietary ecosystems alone.

On Security

Security has also moved up the stack. Last year, security was often discussed as one of many requirements. In 2026, it is closer to a board-level procurement filter. AVIXA explicitly names enhanced security as a top trend, and ISE 2026 launched its first CyberSecurity Summit, reflecting how connected AV systems are now being judged against enterprise expectations for risk, compliance, and resilience. That is a noticeable step-change from last year’s more general “AV meets IT” narrative.

On AI

AI, in a surprise to nobody, has changed, too. Early last year, the conversation at ISE was still full of promise: virtual assistants, smart troubleshooting, predictive maintenance, better user experiences. In 2026, the market tone seems a lot more selective. The industry is moving past broad AI claims and focusing on where AI genuinely improves workflow efficiency, reduces costs, or improves governance.

That is a healthier, more realistic phase for Pro AV. AI is still central, but now the question is less “do you have AI?” and more “where does it save labor, reduce downtime, or improve decision-making"? We see the same happening in broadcast.

On Growth

Another notable shift is commercial discipline. The Pro AV market continues to grow, but the tone is more cautious than celebratory. Growth remains real, but we are navigating a world shaped by tariffs, geopolitics, higher financing costs, and supply-chain uncertainty.

That makes AV in 2026 not just a technology story. It is more of a supply chain story, with the caveat that I am biased, as I work for a switch manufacturer. Memory costs are one example. NAND and DRAM prices have been rising, driven in part by demand for AI infrastructure. The direction of travel is clear: AI is soaking up capacity and keeping upward pressure on memory and storage costs. For Pro AV vendors and integrators, this feeds into endpoint pricing, media processing platforms, compute-heavy collaboration systems, and digital signage players.

On Geopolitics

Geopolitics is also more visible in 2026 than it was at the end of 2025. Trade policy on semiconductors, alongside broader regional instability, is shaping sourcing strategy and risk planning. Disruptions to critical inputs, including materials used in semiconductor manufacturing, add another layer of uncertainty that can ripple through AV supply chains and pricing. Should we worry about this? No, because just like the weather, you can’t influence it. But you should be aware of the repercussions.

On Mergers and Acquisitions

M&A is another signal that the industry is reorganizing around scale, services, and recurring value. Recent acquisitions of manufacturers and regional channel players highlight a clear strategic pattern: buyers want broader, or even global, service footprints, deeper managed services capability, and stronger alignment with workplace transformation and enterprise IT.

So, What is The State of Pro AV in 2026?

It is more networked and more governed. More software-defined, but also more compliance-driven. More AI-aware, but less willing to pay for AI hype. Slightly more open to standards, especially where interoperability reduces lifecycle risk. And it’s more conscious that external forces, from semiconductor pricing to geopolitics, can shape project economics just as much as product innovation can.

Oh, how I miss Steve Jobs. Since leaving us in 2011, I can’t help but think about what innovations he would have graced us with that we didn’t even know we couldn’t live without. I can only imagine what he would have done within the realm of artificial intelligence.

So, I thought I’d go out to AI and ask, “What if Steve Jobs…?”

Steve Jobs Conference Room of Today Imagined by AI

Using AV Technology’s parent company, Future’s corporate license of Google’s Gemini AI image generator, Nano Banana, I asked what a conference room might look like where Steve Jobs would run a meeting today. Keep in mind, I didn’t tell Banana that I was from the AV/IT industry with very high standards for audio, video, and UC equipment, but it did okay.

I asked for two options, with one being more "futuristic."

The People Factor

Next, this is important. Being in the AV/IT industry, it’s easy to focus on the amazing AV/IT equipment and software solutions that help enable collaboration in today’s world of hybrid work. But, at its core, we all know that teched-out meeting spaces don’t make a meeting successful. Since the beginning of time, the biggest problem with meetings is a lack of structure and focus. It’s we, the people.

During my illustrious career, I have led many meetings. I tried but failed to “flip” some planning meetings. I did the work ahead of time and asked participants to come prepared to discuss. The bottom line is, people are busy.

Given there’s likely a plethora of articles on Steve Jobs’ workplace philosophy, I decided to ask AI how Steve Jobs would structure a meeting with in-office and remote participants.

Steve Jobs Meeting of Today Imagined by AI

What follows is Google Gemini’s verbatim response to my query: "If Steve Jobs were alive today, how would he structure a company meeting with a combination of in-office and remote participants using AI agents, todays collaboration AV technologies such as microphones, cameras, displays, and platforms such as MS Teams and Zoom, plus CoPilot, Gemini, and other AI platforms to result in the most productive meeting? The meeting is not a product demo, it’s about ideating, and he wants input from participants."

Gemini Response

If Steve Jobs were structuring a high-productivity, hybrid ideation meeting today, his approach would likely fuse his known principles—extreme focus, ruthless preparation, small working groups, and visual simplicity—with modern AI and collaboration technology.

Here is a speculative structure and technological setup:

1. Preparation: The Asynchronous Foundation

Jobs was known to despise unpreparedness. AI agents would ensure every participant is already up-to-date and primed for ideation.

AI Agent Briefing: Gemini or CoPilot agents would pre-process all relevant background materials (market data, project updates, previous meeting notes) and generate a concise, one-page brief for each attendee. This brief would include three key questions or provocations tailored to the attendee's role, forcing them to arrive with specific ideas.

Idea Seeding: Before the meeting, a private channel (on a platform like Teams or Zoom's asynchronous features) would be used for attendees to anonymously post initial "seed ideas." An AI would cluster these inputs and flag the top 3-5 most original or controversial ideas, which would form the initial agenda points for discussion, ensuring all participants (especially remote/introverted ones) have their voice heard.

2. Meeting Structure: Focused & Intense

The meeting would be limited to the "A-team" (typically no more than 10-12 people) to ensure high-quality input, likely lasting no more than 60-90 minutes.

The Single-Point Agenda: The meeting would begin with a definitive, single-sentence statement of the problem to be solved or the idea to be generated, ensuring razor-sharp focus.

The "Deep Dive" Segments: Instead of free-for-all brainstorming, the meeting would be structured around 15-minute "deep dive" segments, each focused on one of the pre-flagged seed ideas.

Live AI Synthesis: A designated AI (e.g., Gemini) would act as a non-judgmental "scribe and synthesizer." As participants speak, the AI would:

>>> Transcribe & Summarize: Provide a real-time, rolling summary of the discussion on a main display.

>>> Flag Contradictions/Synergies: Identify and display where one participant's idea contradicts or creates synergy with another's, prompting further debate.

>>> Propose "Jobsian" Challenges: Interject (via a low-latency display) with questions a tough customer might ask, or prompt the group to "simplify it" or "make it magical."

3. Technology: Seamless and Invisible (The technology would be designed to disappear, focusing attention entirely on the people and the ideas.)

4. Follow-Up: The Commitment

Actionable Summary: The AI scribe (CoPilot/Gemini) would instantly generate a final "Decisions and Commitments" document, highlighting the top 3 ideas and assigning clear, single owners for the next steps.

The Final Filter: Jobs would personally review this brief summary and, before anyone leaves, ask the group one final, simple question: "Is this insanely great?" The meeting would not conclude until an actionable, "insanely great" next step is identified and agreed upon by all.

My Take, and What Do You Think?

Granted, my AI prompt was a bit leading with the elements I said needed to be part of the meeting space. However, I do like the steps suggested for the human element. I believe we need to be more thoughtful about intent and outcomes before meetings are scheduled.

What do you think? Let me know on LinkedIn!

New to CES for 2026, The Foundry at Fountainebleau was created to showcase artificial intelligence and quantum innovation where experts in the field united to shape ideas and discuss what is on the horizon. Tiffany Moore, SVP, political and industry affairs, CTA, opened the inaugural two-day showcase with an insightful panel with Jennifer Koester, president and COO, Sphere; Cris Turner, VP of knowledge and information products, Google, and, as a surprise, RZA from Wu Tang Clan, to take a deep dive into how advanced AI tools unlock new workflows, prototype ideas, and deliver new creative possibilities.

[SCN from the Inside: Stories from the Vegas Sphere]

Koester and Turner began the panel by discussing how Google and Sphere worked together to unlock new opportunities in bringing Wizard of Oz to life on the massive display inside Las Vegas’ renowned orb. While Koester said there were many “a-ha” moments along the way, one stood out to Turne. It came outside the creative world when he saw a mayor train AI to know the city code, allowing employees to ask AI about code, permits, and other people they needed to know about. Did this unlock creativity? No, he explained, but what he saw was how AI could make a practical impact—how you can enhance and make things better with a very intentional output.

RZA has been using AI for quite some time; however, it did not have the power it does today. For RZA and Wu Tang Clan, AI came in the form of sampling music. Now, he sees AI as one of the strongest assistants you can have in a creativity toolkit. He explained that he doesn’t think of the A in AI as artificial, but assistive, having the ability to amplify that creativity.

He also pointed out that the A could stand for acceleration. “What is most important for creativity is time,” he said. “With today’s technology, and AI assisting me, I can take three days and make it three hours.”

Turner chimed in that AI gives creatives the ability to fail quickly, adding to the concept of accelerated intelligence. You don’t lose months if you don’t like a take, he explained. Koester made it very clear that, even in a massive production like Wizard of Oz, it important to exercise caution. The creative process must still exist; AI needs to be used as a tool, not the creativity, or content creators won’t be successful.

Turner agreed. “I can buy Tiger Woods golf clubs, but I am still not Tiger Woods,” he added. But using AI as a tool can unlock creative possibilities like never before. Play with it intentionally, he concluded. Try and accelerate and affect the challenge, but most importantly, dust off that concept you had 10 years ago. What was impossible for you as a creative then is now possible.

If you've attended one of my webinars during the past six years or more, you'll know that I am a staunch advocate of high-quality audio. That sentiment goes beyond the workplace into my home. My top-of-the-line 65-inch OLED is paired with the best surround sound system I could afford.

Hear Me Out

Until three years ago, I had my interviews for articles transcribed by a woman who knew the industry. Not only did I need her to listen intently to sometimes two different people, but she also needed to discern different dialects and pick up on industry jargon. If my interview were 30 minutes long, it would take her 90 minutes to transcribe, and I'd generally receive it a day later. Two years ago, I began using an AI-generated transcription service that turns around my interviews in a few minutes with around 90 percent accuracy. Given I need to review everything, that percentage is acceptable. I'm only paying a few dollars per interview, and the speed is practically real-time. Unless 100 percent accuracy is needed, human transcriptionists are looking for a new career path.

Within the past year, companies offering highly sophisticated AI transcription services have exploded.

The floodgates have opened. In January, Future editors received a plethora of press releases that hit our inboxes announcing new products and services incorporating AI that enhance the benefits for end-users, integrators, and employees. It's an exciting time.

At Your Service

Like many of you, our company has its fair share of meetings. Every Monday at noon, ET, we have an all-hands B2B Tech Group meeting with, at last count, 53 invited guests. Future, the parent company of AV Technology, has an office in New York City, but the majority of our staff is remote, spread across the U.S. and the U.K., and in more time zones than I can keep track of. For the past few years, Google Meet has become our common meeting space. Having worked remotely since 2014, I have to admit, it's nice to see the faces of the people I work with (just not every Monday, please!).

After extensive research, internal testing, and security measures, Future deployed Gemini, part of Google's family of multimodal AI models and an AI assistant for companywide use. Like other AI assistants, Gemini's features are numerous and growing. I was skeptical because I had already tried its transcription feature and found it was not nearly as accurate as the paid service I was using.

In particular, during the past six months, I have noticed that almost every meeting I participate in, whether it's a Teams, Zoom, or Google meeting scheduled by someone outside my organization, soon after the conclusion, I often receive a meeting recap, and sometimes action items.

Much to my surprise, the summaries and action items have been mostly accurate and pretty helpful. The truth is, I can be more engaged and collaborate more effectively when I am not taking notes. That is, if the AI agent is picking up everything that all the participants are saying.

True Story

Several months ago, Future's B2B senior leadership team flew in from various locations and, along with New York City area employees, conducted a series of planning meetings. Each meeting also comprised three to six remote participants. Our NYC conference rooms are outfitted with a display, webcam/soundbar, and a microphone on the table. The meeting I participated in had approximately 10 people seated at a long conference table, with a microphone in the middle. Plain and simple, I couldn't hear everyone, and when more than one person spoke at once, it was a disaster.

It's not surprising that over the course of the 90 minutes, many sidebar conversations took place that weren't germane to the primary goal. Ironically, those were the conversations I could hear more clearly.

Gemini was not being used to capture this meeting, which was a good thing because the small group sitting together at the end of the table was discussing where to go to dinner that evening, and not everyone was invited. The problem was that I could hear that "quiet" sidebar conversation more clearly than some of the important voices during the meeting.

[Agentic AI, Cindy’s Dahlias, and a Cautionary Tale]

Cindy Predicts Agentic AI as the Top Trend for 2026

I have moderated countless webinars and written even more articles about the importance of high-quality audio in classroom and meeting spaces. As if on its own, being able to hear everyone clearly isn't enough to justify investing in high-quality audio; I firmly believe agentic AI will be the new driver.

Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI Companion, and Google Gemini are very sophisticated AI-powered tools that have many agentic features. Some of these features have quickly become active participants, and one could argue that they are the most productive participants in a meeting.

High-quality audio in meeting spaces is no longer just about delivering "meeting equity" for the hybrid workforce and remote students. Even if there's no remote participant, using the agentic AI features in Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI Companion, and Google Gemini can transcribe and summarize meetings and suggest action items. Think about all the time each person spends (or doesn't bother) on figuring out the salient points from a meeting and what action they need to take. More to the point, did they really listen and remember what action is required? For individuals who weren't able to attend the meeting, a summary with action items can be sent.

I believe the use of agentic AI in meetings in 2026 is going to grow exponentially. And I can attest to how much time it has saved me and how it has reminded me of the key points and actions needed.

The reality, and the real point of what has turned into a rant, is that if you don't invest in high-quality audio for your meeting spaces and classrooms, you are making a statement that you don't want to enable people to be more productive. And we all know that CFOs view productivity as the real measure of success.

In 2026, agentic AI will be the most significant driver of finally achieving buy-in for high-quality audio integrated into meeting spaces and classrooms. That's my prediction, and I am sticking to it.

SCN: How long have you been with AVI-SPL, and what are your responsibilities?

John Zettel: I joined AVI-SPL back in April of 2000. Hard to believe it’s been 25 years. I started as CFO, focused on strengthening our financial side, and about five years later I stepped into the CEO role. My role is to ensure we’re moving in the right direction and creating the kind of company where our people and our customers can be successful.

SCN: How has the recent acquisition by 26North impacted AVI-SPL?

JZ: The partnership with 26North has been very positive for us. It gives AVI-SPL financial backing and strategic support to accelerate our growth, expand globally, and continue investing in innovation. What’s important is that our leadership team and culture remain intact, so our customers and employees get the benefit of added resources without losing what makes AVI-SPL unique. It really helps us to deliver even greater value to the organizations we serve.

SCN: Speaking of acquisitions, AVI-SPL sure does a lot of them, including CCS Southwest not long after the 26North acquisition was completed. What’s the strategy here?

JZ: CCS Southwest is a very respected provider of AV and UC in Arizona. Bringing them into the AVI-SPL family strengthens our overall presence in the Southwest and helps us expand into new market verticals that we previously did not have to focus on, like education. The cultural fit is what makes this acquisition especially meaningful. Over the past 34 years, CCS Southwest has built a strong reputation for helping clients transform how they communicate and collaborate, and we see a strong cultural alignment that’s dedicated to doing what’s right for our teams and communities.

Acquisitions are an important part of our growth strategy. They help us reach new markets and go deeper in the ones we’re already in. But the truth is, less than a third of AVI-SPL's growth comes from acquisitions. Most of it is organic, driven by the great work our teams are doing and the deep relationships we have with our customers.

SCN: How important is sustainability to AVI-SPL, and are you seeing it growing in importance for your customers?

JZ: Sustainability is central to how AVI-SPL operates and creates value for our customers. It’s not a separate initiative. It’s embedded in how we design, deliver, and support technology solutions worldwide. We’ve now published two annual ESG Impact Reports to demonstrate this.

Our customers are on similar journeys. Many now include ESG and sustainability criteria in RFPs and procurement decisions, looking for partners who can help them reduce their carbon footprint, manage electronic waste responsibly, ensure cybersecurity, and verify their impact with real data. Sustainability is moving from being a differentiator to being a core expectation.

SCN: How important has managed services become for AVI-SPL?

JZ: Organizations today need more than just great technology. They need a partner who can make sure that technology runs reliably, scales globally, and adapts as their needs evolve. That is where AVI-SPL’s managed services come in. It is one of the fastest-growing parts of our business, because it allows our customers to focus on their core priorities while we ensure their digital workplace is performing at its best every day.

SCN: What can AVI-SPL’s Symphony do for customers, and how popular is the service?

JZ: AVI-SPL Symphony takes the complexity out of managing collaboration technology. It gives IT and workplace teams one powerful platform to monitor, manage, and support meeting spaces across their entire organization. Today, Symphony is trusted by many of the world’s largest companies, managing tens of thousands of spaces globally and proving the real value of simplifying how the world works and connects.

SCN: Is hiring still an issue for Pro AV integrators?

JZ: The demand for skilled talent continues to grow as the market expands and technology evolves. At AVI-SPL, we have put a lot of focus on building strong career pathways, investing in training and development, and creating a culture where people want to stay and grow. In 2025, our global employee retention numbers reached 91%. We’ve made the training and certification of our employees a key advantage in the marketplace, and our employees, in turn, are happier and stay with us longer. Hiring top talent remains a focus, but it’s the retention and upleveling of our existing talent that must also be a priority.

SCN: What are some of the other significant challenges facing integrators today?

JZ: The pace of change, supply chain pressures, and higher customer expectations are real challenges in our industry. What sets AVI-SPL apart is that we have the scale, partnerships, and expertise to turn those challenges into opportunities and deliver consistent, innovative solutions worldwide.

SCN: What’s the secret to AVI-SPL’s success?

JZ: We have built a company over the last two decades that we believe is uniquely differentiated in terms of our size, presence, and platform of what we offer. All of that has allowed us to work with global companies and be their strategic partner throughout their lifecycle, which not only goes into design and integration, but also the services that manage that on a continual basis. The secret comes down to our people and their commitment to our customers. With rapid changes in our industry, our team continually adapts to customers' needs by staying abreast of the changes in technology, committing to training, and obtaining certifications to instill confidence with our customers.

SCN: What’s the next big thing for the Pro AV industry?

JZ: It's all about elevating the user experience. That means creating immersive environments where people can see, hear, and truly feel the technology at work, while also enhancing everyday life in meaningful ways. The technology we deliver should make work and life easier, more flexible, and more enjoyable. A specific example of the continued evolution within the industry is the deeper integration of AI and data analytics into the workplace experience. We are moving beyond just connecting people to enhancing how they collaborate, using intelligence to make meetings more productive, spaces more efficient, and support more proactive. Coupled with continued advances in immersive technologies and sustainability, we are on the verge of a new era where AV is not just enabling work but actively shaping the future of how people engage and create together.

Global instability, technology disruption, and a drastic shift in trade practices continue to affect business as we head into 2026. One thing is clear: The uncertainty continues, but so, too, does the demand to keep moving forward regardless of how unpredictable things are. Here’s what is on the minds of AV professionals as the industry ramps up for another year.

Trust Issues and AI

AI has a significant presence in Pro AV, with its integration into PTZ cameras, speakerphones, and transcription and translation tools. For Aaron Xia, CEO and co-founder of Telycam, the next trend to watch is AI's evolution from being an assistant into becoming a more autonomous operator in, say, the production environment, where systems would be able to predict what users need and make changes in real time when needed.

“For example, in multi-camera live streaming, PTZ cameras would be able to communicate with each other and analyze the environment to automatically coordinate camera switching and live directing based on the scene,” Xia illustrated.

That said, Xia recognized rolling out these features isn’t without its challenges. “The main obstacles to breaching this barrier have been a lack of sufficiently diverse real-world data and limited on-device processing power within individual AV products for that level of AI,” he explained. He added that privacy concerns, as well as the need for ultra-low latency, render it difficult to train and deploy advanced AI models capable of operating effectively in live production settings.

Jason Roberts, VP of workplace strategy at FORTÉ, also noted that data collection and integration remain an obstacle to AI’s evolution within Pro AV. “Most AV environments have dozens of disconnected systems—from meeting platforms, room schedulers, control processors, and sensors—all generating valuable insights, but very few of those systems speak the same language,” he observed. “Without that interoperability layer, AI can’t reach its contextual depth or deliver meaningful automation.”

Trust is another issue that AI must address, Roberts added. Many companies won’t go all-in on AI until they are confident that it’s reliable and transparent about what exactly it’s doing with their data. “Organizations are understandably cautious about letting AI make autonomous adjustments in live collaboration spaces, especially in industries with strict privacy or compliance requirements,” he said.

Bill Chamberlin, president of Verrex, believes that one of the next applications for AI in Pro AV is self-repair, which could improve integrators’ efficiency significantly. “I think we’re going to see a lot of growth with proactive break/fix and self-healing,” he said. “Even today, with some of the systems out there, you can write proactive scripts so if it’s not seeing a display or it’s on the wrong port, it’s automatically fixing itself.”

Not only does this capability eliminate the need to roll a truck to resolve these issues, but Chamberlin said it also builds increased trust in the systems AV professionals are deploying.

According to Rob Pickering, director of technology at TRITECH Communications, for clients to truly benefit from AI, AV integrators need to understand how they are already using it and their goals for leveraging it in the future. This requires determining what AI tools organizations have already deployed and examining how Pro AV solutions intersect with these technologies.

“If you think about something like Copilot, how is that client using it?” Pickering asked. “To what level does it come into the conference rooms? What are the features that we need to [provide]?” Integrators should be thinking about their systems in the context of the client’s entire workday, he added.

On an internal level, Pickering would like to see AI technology that can create a set of drawings (a baseline design) that teams can then review, edit, and validate. He also sees the potential for AI to streamline the design process for system upgrades. For this latter application, AI would analyze previous deployments and summarize that data, giving designers quick insight into the customer’s present technology profile.

AI is also being tasked with voice messaging, audio translations, written transcriptions, and even script summaries. "With the latest advancements in AI come dramatically improved options to reach people from a variety of languages and reading or hearing abilities, while maximizing consistency in the quality of announcements and messaging," said Bill Bennett, media solutions architect at ENCO Systems.

For example, AI can create very humanlike synthetic or modeled voices and offer real-time translation in multiple languages. In fact, GenAI can go further, summarizing an emergency weather report, creating a script from the report, and creating a voice recording that can be dispersed. "Now, when it's 3:00 in the morning and the gruff voice of a sleepy security guard is all that's available, AI can create a quality of voice that can be consistent day in, and day out," Bennett said.

While AI is that powerful, it's not quite that easy. "Like any new technology, AI requires some skill in learning how to choose from the multitude of technology options in the marketplace, including how to adapt to the workflows and signal and file formats required in the professional audiovisual industry in ways which are both reliable and efficient," Bennett added. "Designers and integrators need to trust in resources who have been doing this already, to help get them up to speed. ENCO has more than 1,000 broadcast customers using AI tools to create their messaging, many in fully automated settings, which is not dissimilar from messaging and announcing in commercial spaces where quality and consistency are key to repeatable, understandable messaging, regardless of the audience."

Dishing on Displays

Outside of the impact that tariffs may have on display technology, Chamberlin estimated that the Pro AV industry will continue to see price decreases, which will, in turn, render large-format screens more accessible to a wider client base. “It will make it more [feasible] to put large-format displays in more multipurpose spaces, more experience centers, and things along those lines,” he offered. “It’s just going to make it more affordable.”

Pickering also sees an uptick in demand for larger displays. “Spaces are scaling up, meaning newer technologies are allowing larger displays to be rapidly ordered, deployed, and commissioned to where it was just not possible before,” he said.

This is because, in part, several manufacturers are packaging their offerings in a more streamlined fashion, according to Pickering, which simplifies both procurement and installation. “Manufacturers have provided an ordering mechanism [where the display] comes with everything,” he explained. "It’s a single SKU. It’s got the mounts. It’s one line item on a bill of materials.”

For hybrid meeting environments, FORTÉ’s customers are standardizing on 21:9 displays for executive boardrooms, high-end collaboration spaces, and innovation centers, according to Roberts. He said clients like the aspect ratio’s support of immersive layouts (such as Microsoft Teams Front Row), and also appreciate its wider perspective, which creates more meeting equity between on-site and remote participants.

“The added horizontal real estate enables dynamic content zones for people and data that create a more engaging visual balance and reduce cognitive fatigue during long meetings,” Roberts added.

At Planar, chip on board (COB) will continue to be a focus in 2026. Robert Detwiler, senior director of product management, called it a “mainstay” within the company’s LED offerings. He also predicted the arrival of the next generation of MicroLEDs in the coming year.

Additionally, Detwiler pointed out the growing number of facilities that are treating their displays as a design feature. “Displays need to blend into the architecture or be designed to work with architecture, as spaces become more and more highly designed,” he said.

While Planar will continue to invest in LED, the company also acknowledges the continued demand for large-format LCDs, tiled LCDs, as well as smaller-format touchscreens and desktop monitors. “LCD displays are a very good option for space-constrained environments and applications that require the highest resolutions,” Detwiler said. “While the cost of LED continues to be more accessible, the cost of LCD displays continues to remain below LED.” This is why, he explained, Planar remains committed to expanding and improving its LED family of products.

Palmer Digital Group manufactures indoor and outdoor digital kiosks, display enclosures, and menu boards. Chuck Lewis, EVP at the company, believes the incorporation of voice-activated AI into digital kiosks and signage will become increasingly prevalent. He noted that this feature can be especially helpful in quick service restaurant (QSR) applications, as well as retail.

“For example, you can go into a clothing store, approach one of our kiosks, and ask it where you can find women’s jeans,” Lewis illustrated. “It can direct you to the right aisle without you having to wait in line [for a salesperson] to tell you [where you go].”

Trial of the Tariffs

Few would argue that predicting the 2026 tariff landscape is possible. However, one could submit that navigating today’s trade climate requires similar skills to those AV professionals applied during the pandemic, such as adaptability, agility, and communication. But while this industry may have refined these chops just a few years ago, it’s becoming apparent that when it comes to tariffs, everyone pays in one form or another.

Take Aurora Multimedia, for example. It's a U.S.-based AV technology manufacturer, its assembly line is in the United States, and it employs American workers. It is, as CEO/CTO Paul Harris quipped, “living the American Dream.”

If all of this is true, why is Harris quipping about anything right now? "Made in the USA" companies shouldn’t be complaining—aren’t they benefiting from the tariffs? Maybe some are. But if you’re an AV tech manufacturer, you probably need to source a few rather important bits and pieces from overseas to make your complex electronics. That means that you’re paying tariffs.

“If you’re putting tariffs on the raw materials that are only made overseas right now, and you don’t give me an exemption, you are causing me to pay a higher price for those materials,” Harris explained.

For Aurora Multimedia, that’s not a hypothetical concern. The semiconductors essential to its AV over IP product lines are produced exclusively in Taiwan. With no tariff exemptions in place, every shipment carries additional cost.

Another challenge, according to Harris, is blanket ordering—purchasing components in bulk under long-term contracts. While those agreements lock in pricing, new tariffs are applied to any units that haven’t yet shipped, causing unanticipated cost spikes.

“All of a sudden, a product that cost $300 to build might now be $600,” Harris said. “You’re playing an odds game. If you think a trade deal is coming, you might wait a month or two, but in doing so, you risk gaps in your supply chain.”

That wait-and-see strategy can quickly backfire. Delays make parts harder to source, and scarcity drives prices even higher. “Simply put,” Harris said, “it’s a mess.”

Aurora has done its best to minimize the impact all of this has on its customers by absorbing some of these costs. However, despite the desire to avoid passing on these new expenses to its clients, it cannot continue to absorb everything.

“I think everybody is realizing we have no choice,” Harris admitted. “You’ve got to [add] a separate line item that says ‘tariff,’ [and] you’ve got to accept the fact that this is the way it’s going to be.”

At TRITECH, regular communications between project teams and clients help everyone continue to move forward. Pickering explained that the firm includes language in its proposals that alerts clients of the potential need to reassess pricing when and if tariffs change.

For Chamberlin, an attitude of acceptance helps companies better focus on their core purpose. After all, he said, tariffs are just tax. He acknowledged that over-communication with both clients and employees helps to reduce the level of panic that can manifest in the face of uncertainty, as was the case during the pandemic. “Our job as our clients’ partner is to help guide them, and be the voice of calm, and really look at things long term,” he added.

Roberts has observed a transition from what he calls “short-term reaction” into “strategic recalibration.” He argued that in recalibrating, integrators will need to be agile to serve their clients well. In conversations with customers, FORTÉ is highlighting the benefits of scalable solutions that can be adapted when required, while at the same time providing the features that clients need.

“Organizations will increasingly favor partners who can guarantee availability, interoperability, and long-term service continuity, not just deliver hardware,” Roberts said. “Internally, our teams have focused on design flexibility, building solutions that can pivot between platforms, components, or brands without compromising performance or user experience."

For Roberts, being agile and flexible means that system designs shouldn’t be reliant on one manufacturer or even one supply region. “The integrators who succeed in 2026 will be the ones who can flex, offering equivalent solutions, consistent performance, and continuity of service even when sourcing challenges arise,” he added.

For more than a year now, whether the meeting has been initiated by a coworker, someone from outside my organization, or myself, there’s often been a “third party” that occupies a space in veritable Brady Bunch blocks. I’ve gotten used to most meetings being recorded, then receiving an email with a link to the meeting minutes, and, depending on who initiated the calendar invitation, sometimes action items. For the most part, it has been surprisingly helpful. But then, there’s this…

Invariably, there’s one person who is two or three minutes late to the meeting. Just like in-person meetings, and because we’re human, these few minutes can be time to catch up about the weekend, what’s happening in life, or to give a heads up about a co-worker or client that shouldn’t be shared with the larger group.

Cindy’s Agentic AI Cautionary Tale

Imagine my surprise when I saw a summary and an action list for planting and caring for my dahlias. If you’re interested, more on that later. But this got me thinking.

Remember when you got your first “work email” address, and you were excited to use it to communicate with friends. Then you moved on from that job and wondered who was reading your emails? Today, there’s a slew of work management tools, such as Slack, which we use at Future. Are you one of many individuals who is under the impression that your one-to-one work conversations on Slack are private? They are not private. I’ll leave you to explore that on your own.

As agentic AI tools such as Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Gemini prove to be invaluable for saving time and increasing productivity, more people are in “set-it and forget-it” mode. Although all participants are made aware that a meeting is being recorded, it has become so commonplace that we’re not always cognizant that, as soon as a session is initiated, EVERY word you say is being recorded for posterity. Protect your posterior and the potential harm your “private” conversation can do to you and others. If you have something to say that shouldn’t be heard by others, don’t say it.

Cindy’s Dahlias: A Gemini Summary and Action List

Cindy discusses her first year growing dahlias, expressing her satisfaction with their prolific blooms, which she uses for her table and shares with neighbors. She notes that despite living north of Boston, the dahlias required a lot of water but thrived in the sun. John mentions that his dahlias in Los Angeles didn't grow due to hot, dry conditions. Cindy explains that she bought seven different varieties for color and size. She is happy that she is still cutting flowers in early November, but acknowledges that the first hard freeze will end their season. Cindy also shares that in her gardening zone, dahlias need to be dug up, stored, and replanted annually, a task she is now willing to undertake due to the rewarding results. She also mentions that the dahlias emerged in late June and didn't bloom until mid-August, so she used annuals to fill her garden during the summer.

(The action list automatically created isn't particularly helpful for the planting and care of dahlias, but a tutorial on how to grow and harvest was not the point of the meeting.)

· Cut dahlias every few days to put on the table.

· Share dahlias with neighbors.

· Give dahlias lots of water.

· Dig up dahlias in the fall before the ground freezes.

· Store dahlias in the basement during the winter.

· Replant dahlias in the spring after the ground thaws.

· Fill in the garden with annuals until dahlias bloom.

In this case, only a filler conversation about my dahlias was transcribed; a summary for the meeting minutes was created; and a list of “action items” was compiled.

What tidbits have you discussed before a meeting “begins” that were unwittingly shared with everyone?

After years of speculation, the initial fear surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has largely subsided. Today, Pro AV professionals are actively exploring how to harness AI to streamline production and distribution. Yet, with so many options in GenAI, the process isn’t simple—and despite heavy promotion, the technology remains in its early stages for the video production industry.

Commonly used to create text, images, music, and video from existing data patterns, GenAI clearly holds promise. Still, experts acknowledge that AI is currently in the “hype” phase.

At the recent AV/IT Summit in New York City (presented by SCN and AV Technology), a panel of experts concluded that while AI is sparking excitement, many professionals are still figuring out which tools to use and how to apply them. This uncertainty has already led to the creation of new AI specialist roles within Pro AV companies to help guide adoption.

One panel participant, Bill Bennett, product design and solutions manager at ENCO Systems, leans toward optimism for the future. His company specializes in real-time, AI-powered translation and transcription. At the event, ENCO demonstrated its enCaption Sierra product, a live system that runs entirely on-premise, avoiding cloud costs and connectivity issues, while instantly displaying captions during the summit.

According to Bennett, customers increasingly want automated, on-prem systems but also demand instant multilingual translations for global audiences. Instead of human captioners, AI can now deliver faster, more accurate transcripts, and many clients have already integrated such solutions.

Regardless of whether you believe the hype, AI is poised to transform Pro AV by automating tasks that were once manual and inconsistent. Real-time transcription, multilingual translation, intelligent camera tracking, audio enhancement, and predictive analytics are just a few areas where AI is making an impact.

Across the industry, experimentation is accelerating. There’s a growing sense across the industry that those who fail to adopt AI risk losing their competitive edge.

Expert Perspectives

AI-Media’s latest solution, LEXI Voice, translates live speech into multiple languages and delivers natural-sounding voice output in real time—expanding accessibility and audience reach. Powered by speech recognition, translation, and voice synthesis models, LEXI Voice enables attendees at live events or viewers of live streams to hear content in their own language, instantly and cost-effectively.

Russ Newton of AI-Media emphasized that while many companies are embracing AI, true impact comes from integrating it at the core of workflows. “Some are simply layering AI tools on top of legacy workflows, missing the opportunity to truly reimagine processes for speed, scalability, and cost efficiency,” he explained. “The best approach is to integrate AI at the core of your workflow, especially for repetitive, accuracy-critical functions such as captioning, translation, and voice synthesis. This is where AI delivers the greatest impact and return on investment."

Systems integrator CTI is also adopting AI for efficiency and transformation. Dave Hatz, VP of machine intelligence, explained that the company uses AI not only for design automation and invoice accuracy but also for employee support via chatbots. For him, success depends less on the technology itself and more on aligning AI projects with business value, working closely with stakeholders, and deploying securely.

“From the leadership level down, we are adopting AI for both incremental efficiency gains as well as exploring transformational changes to how our teams work,” Hatz said. "I lead our DevOps team, and while we started with the 'let's try ChatGPT and Copilot' phase like everyone else, we've moved well past that. We have dedicated AI developers and a structured approach that takes projects from idea through R&D, pilot, and into production quickly and effectively. From there, we quickly learn, refine, and expand the solutions with a focus on delivering true business impact.”

Today, CTI is actively using AI in its daily operations to spec and manage system integration projects. “Our design consultants and engineers use AI-generated scope of work documents integrated directly into our D365 CRM system,” Hatz said. The company is also piloting an AI system that helps their finance team catch errors on invoices before sending them to customers, errors that would otherwise delay payment from the customers.

“The key insight we've learned is that the AI technology isn't the hard part," Hatz offered. "Success depends much more on ensuring you are aligned to delivering true business value, developing solutions with business stakeholders and not just for them, and deploying in a secure and scalable manner."

AI-Assisted Auto Tracking

Meanwhile, Sony is embedding AI into robotic PTZ cameras and professional displays. Features like auto-tracking, intelligent framing, brightness adjustment, and predictive maintenance improve efficiency and personalization. Sony’s latest firmware updates for its 4K/HD PTZ cameras expand intelligent automation even further, with tools like subject framing, fixed angles, and natural composition adjustments.

“AI is being integrated across a range of AV products to enhance performance and user experience,” said Karim Springer, lead sales support engineer, professional display solutions, Sony Electronics. “In PTZ cameras, it's powering automated shooting with advanced auto focus, auto tracking, and auto framing for seamless, efficient operation. In professional displays, AI enables content personalization, environmental adjustments like ambient light adaptation, and predictive maintenance, among other smart capabilities.”

Last year, Sony showed how its deep learning technology enables precise subject tracking, maintaining consistent framing even when faces are partially obscured. This year, it unveiled the version 3.0 firmware update for its SRG-A40 and SRG-A12 PTZ cameras. Features include “Tracking Range,” which provides auto-framing of a defined area to avoid unintended subjects, “Fixed Angle Position” for pausing and holding a predefined view for consistent framing, and “Lead Room Effect,” which adjusts composition naturally to provide space in the direction of the subject’s gaze.

Looking Ahead

Despite progress, challenges remain. Ethical concerns about bias and job displacement persist, while accuracy and reliability are critical in broadcast and Pro AV work. Costs of implementation and the constant influx of new platforms also pose hurdles. Plus, the real challenge might be the need for employees with specific knowledge of the various AI platforms (with new ones appearing virtually every week) and what they can do.

That said, experts agree that AI will soon play a larger role in live production. From automated camera switching and captioning to audience sentiment analysis and real-time translation, AI promises to make events more global, inclusive, and cost effective. Some predict AI will handle much of the technical execution, freeing human teams to focus on creative storytelling and audience engagement.

Newton expects live event production to be AI-orchestrated, with speech, video, text, and metadata flowing seamlessly across platforms and devices in real time. “Expect AI to take on more live functions, from camera automation and audience sentiment analysis to adaptive captioning and localized voice translation," he said. "At AI-Media, we see this as an opportunity to not only reduce costs and improve workflows, but to transform live events into truly global, inclusive experiences accessible to all."

“I think we're heading toward a fundamental shift in what's possible creatively in live event video production,” said Hatz. “The pattern I see across AI implementation is that it handles the technical execution, freeing humans to focus on the creative vision and storytelling."

Producing high-quality live events today requires teams of specialists, such as camera operators, TDs, graphic designers, and audio engineers. While that expertise will always be valuable, Hatz believes AI is going to democratize access to professional-level production capabilities.

“Imagine a live event where AI handles real-time camera switching based on the content and energy of the presentation, automatically generates graphics and lower-thirds, optimizes audio levels, and even creates social media clips in real-time,” he offered. “The humans can focus entirely on the creative storytelling—what shots tell the story best, what moments deserve emphasis, how to craft the overall narrative experience. The future isn't fewer creative people involved in live events, it's creative people being able to focus entirely on creativity rather than being limited by technical execution constraints.”

Setting aside the sports venues of previous years, the 2025 AV/IT Summit brought together industry leaders at Convene at One Liberty Plaza in Lower Manhattan for discussions centered on collaboration, innovation, and issues affecting the industry. Produced by Future B2B, it was the most successful summit to date, with more than 20 sponsors and record attendance.

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Led by AV Technology’s Cindy Davis and SCN’s Mark J. Pescatore, the conference program featured forward-looking sessions, networking opportunities, and actionable insights aimed at shaping AV/IT convergence. Here are some highlights from the day's program.

Bring the Pain

The summit kicked off with the new "Pain Points Panel," an interactive discussion about challenges currently facing the industry, including reducing system complexity and enhancing collaboration between AV and IT teams. Matt McCleskey of Xyte emphasized the importance of designing AV systems that are cloud-compatible and AI-ready, enabling them to adapt and stay relevant as technology evolves. He noted that standardizing a consistent set of components will make systems easier to service and training simpler.

Pescatore emphasized the ongoing frustration of not involving integrators early enough in the design process, which could prevent costly changes and better aligned technology choices with business goals. This resonated with the audience, with one participant noting that integrators are often faced with “nonsense” designs that they then must fix.

The panel also emphasized the problem of AV being seen as separate from IT, often found in facilities but not included in the IT strategy. Bill Chamberlin from Verrex claimed that AV should be treated as an operational expense, like IT hardware, with planned upgrade cycles of three to seven years, helping systems from falling behind in security and features.

Cybersecurity Realities

During his keynote, Jared Timmins of Diversified described the rapid integration of AV, IT, media, and cloud workflows as a technological renaissance that demands a new approach to security, design, and operations. Once isolated, modern AV systems are now intelligent, flexible, connected environments, but they are becoming more vulnerable to sophisticated cyberattacks, including a 4,000% increase in AI-driven phishing attacks over the past year.

[Diversified: Is Cybersecurity an Inside Job?]

Timmins stressed to attendees that they must go beyond “fit-for-purpose” AV systems and adopt "secure-by-design" principles, making security an integral part of the design and deployment process rather than an afterthought. “If you wait, security becomes a liability instead of a strategy,” he said.

While software orchestration, microservices, and cloud-based infrastructure offer scalability and agility, they also add complexity and potential vulnerabilities. Technology is crucial, but the connection between AV and IT teams is equally vital, as many security breaches stem from social engineering rather than technical flaws. Teams need not only better tools but also enhanced training, shared standards, and earlier involvement from integrators, manufacturers, and enterprise IT.

Virtual Misconceptions

Virtual production is a rapidly expanding field that offers numerous opportunities and practical uses across various sectors, including corporate and higher education. However, it is often misunderstood.

Sony's John Garmendi shared the “three Cs” of virtual production misconceptions: cost, complexity, and cinema. Many believe virtual production is only for Hollywood blockbusters, but there are many ways to get started small, such as greenscreens, AI-enabled tracking, or LED walls that can be scaled to fit your space and budget.

Matt Morgan of Ross Video emphasized that the key is asking the right outcome-oriented questions, such as what’s the purpose and how do we serve that purpose with the appropriate solution. Mark Metzger from AVIXA agreed, explaining that you can start small and scale as your needs grow, while still increasing engagement and production value.

Look to the Future

"The Future of AV Technology" session covered a variety of topics. Sharath Abraham from Jabra began by explaining how hybrid work has become the new norm, citing economist Nick Bloom’s research concerning return-to-office policies, with many companies often requiring at least one day in the office each week. Advanced Systems Group's Michele Ferreira added that hybrid work has expanded beyond conference rooms into broadcast environments, maintaining workflows that were adapted during the pandemic.

Looking closely at modern conference rooms, users expect them to function as a seamless extension of other workday tools, including integration with apps and a consistent user interface. Rob Pickering from TRITECH Communications emphasized that the most successful organizations make training a routine part of their culture through ongoing messaging and drop-in sessions, rather than one-time training events.

The panel agreed that when it comes to AI, it’s important to understand it rather than fear it, focusing on using it to streamline operational tasks like filtering emails, automating research, and mastering prompting to maximize its benefits.

Lessons from Higher Education

Moderated by HETMA chair Erin Maher-Moran from Johns Hopkins University, a session devoted to higher education wasn't focused on failures, but rather provided an opportunity to examine what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what we can all do better moving forward.

[SCN Goes Back to School—Get the August Issue Today!]

For example, Marcus Longmuir from The New School voiced frustration about a multi-room project that started smoothly but became overwhelmed by too many contractors, subcontractors, and project managers, which led to scattered communication and poor decision-making. “We ended up having seven final walkthroughs … and we still had, over the years, issues with all of the rooms,” he shared.

Tim Van Woeart from Rutgers University shared a cautionary story. Despite thorough preparation and testing, a crucial step was overlooked: network compatibility. This oversight caused AV switchers in 30 classrooms to lock up, requiring replacement and costing tens of thousands of dollars.

Even if everything goes perfectly, both panelists noted that well-installed systems can still be wasted if end users aren’t engaged or trained, which is why they emphasized ongoing support and faculty outreach. “If no one knows about it, or no one’s going to support it, it’ll then sit there in the system and just collect dust,” Van Woeart added.

AV/IT Convergence

As discussed during the "AV/IT // IT/AV" session, the rapid adoption of AI has compelled many to find ways to bridge the gap between AV and IT, with early collaboration being crucial for successful AI-enhanced experiences. Vanessa Jensen from Shure also pointed out that cloud monitoring and enterprise VLAN integration are becoming standard practices, with remote visibility, monitoring, and troubleshooting becoming game changers for many organizations.

With an IT background, Tom Nyhus of AVI-SPL highlighted the complexity of network strategy and emphasized that you can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach when comparing dedicated AV networks to their integration into enterprise infrastructure. By using proper segmentation, VLANs, and firewalls, you can build networks that support both while reducing costs and maintaining performance and security.

NETGEAR’s Alex Pendleton emphasized the importance of reliable enterprise-grade hardware, demonstrated by NETGEAR’s success in penetration testing with Fortune 500 companies. He also noted that low-end switches often lack the features necessary for AV security.

Giving Voice to the AI Buzz

The summit wrapped up with a discussion of everyone’s favorite buzzword, AI, and how it’s transforming collaboration, workflows, and revenue models. Joel Carroll of Mersive highlighted how powerful AI can be in easing friction in meetings—and if you don’t even notice it’s there, that’s when we will know AI is truly effective. Meanwhile, Misty Chalk of BrightSign emphasized the impact on digital signage, highlighting that AI enhances real-time analytics and personalization by processing gaze detection, demographics, and emotions directly on the media player, allowing for instant content adjustments.

AI can also influence speech-to-text and translation services by enabling instant live translations in multiple languages. Bill Bennett from ENCO Systems mentioned that it can even reproduce speech in synthetic voices modeled after the original speaker.

But AI isn’t perfect, with SCN columnist David Danto of TalkingPointz sharing that it is often "confidently wrong." As a result, it must always be viewed as a tool that requires human oversight and editing of the final product. That’s why, when asked if AI is currently more hype or hope, most of the panel leaned toward hype, but recognized real potential if the Pro AV industry can figure out the best ways to utilize it.

It's AI Appreciation Day!

To commemorate the day, SCN content director Mark J. Pescatore talked with Julian Phillips, SVP and managing director of XTG, a division of AVI-SPL focused on experience technology solutions. Phillips recently published LevAIthan: A Brief History of Humanity and AI, a book that explores how this technology is already reshaping the world.

The interview begins with a discussion about why Phillips wrote the book, which provides a historical look at various areas of society, such as education, industry, and culture, and explores how AI can impact these areas. He said he kept his focus broad in LevAIthan because AI is "going to change not only the relationship between human beings and machines ... but also how we as human beings interact with each other."

With regard to Pro AV, Phillips believes AI provides powerful tools that enable the industry to help its customers tell stories "in ways that we never thought possible." Those tools are based around managing data, personalizing experiences, and engaging all the senses. If those tools can be applied properly, Phillips believes it could unlock incredible growth potential for the industry.

You can watch the whole interview below.

Sponsored Content

Russ Newton, head of strategic partnerships at AI-Media, recently spoke with AV Technology during the company’s debut appearance at InfoComm. Having met with a great deal of success in broadcasting, Newton said he is excited to bring AI-Media’s LEXI Voice solution into the AV space.

Check out the full video interview below.

“What's interesting about the audio-visual world and being able to work with integrators and designers is the potential to bring forth a symmetrical experience of translation that's facilitated by audio-visual and leveraging AI,” Newton said. “As soon as you're able to grab that best-quality audio, it's basically an endless opportunity because that ensures the highest quality of accuracy.”

The LEXI Voice tool not only makes spaces accessible where there would otherwise be a language barrier, but now, a lower price point means the solution itself has become accessible to more venues than ever.

“The cost is no longer cost-prohibitive and can be automated in terms of delivering captions,” Newton said. “LEXI Voice is a game changer because it's no longer just something that brings forth accessibility, but it allows organizations to step into new markets, to expand their influence within their organizations. It brings cohesiveness more efficiently because we can take a single language in and translate to any of their desired languages, so people can participate.”

And finally, security is a perennial concern among organizations that rely on the cloud for handling sensitive information. Customers can rest assured that security is also top of mind for product developers at AI-Media.

“At the end of the day, our objective is to build feature parity between our on-premise and cloud offerings, including being able to bring forth secure cloud options—very specifically to address the concerns of security,” Newton said. “We already have successes with very well-known organizations that have the highest levels of security, where we've deployed captioning solutions to fulfill that with full on-premise logic, and so bringing in translation and voice is the next step.”

About AI-MEDIA

Founded in 2003, AI-Media has grown from humble beginnings to become the world’s leading captioning technology provider. AI-Media was founded with the belief that everyone deserves access to information. And this vision remains today as we continue our journey as the world’s leading captioning provider, pioneering technology that’s revolutionizing the way millions across the globe consume content. Today, AI-Media is a global organization that helps many of the world’s leading brands caption their TV broadcasts, live streams, events, virtual meetings, and more. Our team is spread across the globe, with more than 500 employees situated across six office locations in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. Our technology delivers over 7 million minutes of captioning, transcription, and translation for live and recorded media content, online events, and web streams every month.

In the summer of 2014, social media helped power the success of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. People would dump cold water on their heads and challenge their friends to do the same. According to the ALS Association, the trend helped raise awareness for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease) as well as more than $115 million for medical research, care, and advocacy.

Recently, my teenager asked me to dump a bucket of cold water on her head while my wife shot a video of the activity. Turns out there's a new USC Speak Your MIND Ice Bucket Challenge, which was launched in early spring by the Mental Illness Needs Discussion (MIND) club at the University of South Carolina. The goal is to spread awareness of mental health and collect donations for Active Minds, a nonprofit organization with a mission to transform mental health norms.

Also in early spring, another viral trend invaded social media platforms. That's because on March 25, OpenAI launched an advanced image generator for its GPT-4o model for ChatGPT—and made it free to use. Suddenly, feeds were filled with custom AI action figures of various quality.

Since last year's attempt to update my headshot via AI went amiss, I figured I'd try to repair my relationship with AI with a less serious exercise. Now, GenAI tools like ChatGPT operate based on the prompts (input) you provide. Provide a short burst of inspiration ("use this photo to make a posable action figure") and you're likely to be uninspired by the results. The more detailed and specific the prompts, the better the finished product.

My first attempt was created using Bylo.ai and my current headshot. The site was kind enough to provide a pretty detailed prompt to simplify the process. I added some specifics, including what accessories should be included in my blister pack, and pressed the magic button.

I did not insist on a photorealistic action figure. That's really the only way I can explain the action figure that the AI provided. In real life, I'm the height of the average American male. My action figure is noticeably shorter. And stockier. Look, I know I need to lose a few pounds, but action figure Mark needs to actively research the keto diet. I'm not saying it looks like a hobbit in a blazer, but I'm not saying it doesn't, either. And don't get me started on the "reporler's notebook."

When I tried ChatGPT, I used a different headshot from the 2025 NAB Show (thanks to the Leadership Foundation and FUJIFILM), as well as a different prompt based on suggestions I found on the internet. What you're seeing is the fourth attempt; I continued to add details to refine my action figure.

He's also height challenged, even though my prompt included the term "average height and build," so apparently ChatGPT needs more guidance with personal dimensions. The microphone and laptop went through changes in every version, and I have no idea why it decided to change my notebook into a "notebock" (it was correct in previous versions). While the packaging looks ready for an endcap display, the overall final result looks less like an action figure and more like a picture of an action figure.

[Viewpoint: If You Build It, Will They Come?]

I don't mean to throw a bucket of cold water over this viral trend. Sure, there are always privacy concerns—and I think we'll see some landmark AI copyright infringement lawsuits sooner rather than later—but turning myself into an action figure by typing a paragraph was fun. Of course, the trick is getting the result you want, and that can be frustrating, even with the best of prompts. Here's hoping I'll be taller for the next viral trend.

Much like last year, artificial intelligence will be one of the dominating buzzwords from the show floor at InfoComm 2025. AI is transforming the modern Pro AV landscape, maximizing efficiency and enhancing the user experience in the conference room, production space, classroom, and beyond. Whether you're looking at the latest AI-driven tracking systems on PTZ cameras or how AI is being used to automate tasks in the workplace, understanding AI is no longer simply a convenience but a necessity.

InfoComm 2025 is set to push the AI revolution forward with four full days of insightful discussions from the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL. As Pro AV's biggest trend continues to rapidly change how we work, joining the conversation is imperative to keeping up across every vertical.

Beginning on Tuesday, June 10, with the Beyond the Meeting Room: AI’s Expanding Role in the Workplace panel and concluding on Friday, June 13, with AI Tools for Business Productivity in AV Industry, industry experts from Shure, Crestron, AVI-SPL, Almo Pro AV, CTI, and more will dissect AI's expanding role in digital signage, retail, modern workplaces, audio, security, and just about anywhere a Pro AV installation is possible.

[Viewpoint: Making AI Connections]

"Attendees should be excited for the AI panels because AI is rapidly transforming our world, including the AV industry," said Karen Castaño, director of national business at Almo Pro AV and a panelist on AI Use Cases from the AV Edge on June 12. "Whether you're already using it or not, it’s time to join the conversation. Understanding AI is key to using it effectively as its applications grow. AI has the potential to help streamline time-consuming tasks for my team and, when used thoughtfully, enhance human experience for our customers, which makes this even more exciting for me. It's not about replacing people—it's about enabling better, faster live engagement."

Return to office mandates are popping up all over the economy, as organizations continue to ask people to come to an office that was built for ways of working that no longer apply to today’s workforce. As a result, people are resisting these mandates, not just because of the logistic hassles of commuting, but rather because the space that they have stifles their humanity/productivity. As organizations worldwide navigate the complexities of returning to the office post-pandemic, technology plays a pivotal role in ensuring a smooth transition.

As people yearn to reconnect with their colleagues in person, configuring the office space to support this desire for human connection becomes essential. Among the myriad of technological advancements, AI stands out as a game-changer in enabling teams to collaborate more effectively, create and manage their work products, and ultimately execute on the strategic goals. Fundamentally, the office space needs to be smarter and better suited to enabling human interaction—it’s time to build the spaces that people want to come to in order to feel like they are part of a team.

AI has and will continue to revolutionize the way teams communicate and manage their projects by making collaboration more efficient and less cumbersome. Through AI-powered communication tools, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, employees can streamline their workflows and eliminate repetitive tasks.

[Viewpoint: How Smart Is Your Office?]

By now, we are very familiar with the ability for AI to enhance individual productivity. Yet, we are in the early stages of learning how AI can be a functional agent for your team’s productivity. Project management software integrated with AI capabilities provides real-time insights into project progress, identifies potential bottlenecks, and offers solutions to mitigate them.

Plus, AI algorithms can analyze historical project data to predict future outcomes, enabling teams to make informed decisions. Moreover, AI-driven platforms facilitate seamless document sharing and version control, ensuring that all team members have access to the most up-to-date information.

That Human Touch

Great, so what does this have to do with the physical office space? Well, humans by and large want to be together, and we tend to do our best work when we are closer to our teammates. There is no technology that can replace the energy you feel and the creativity that is inspired by being close to another human.

While I do love being a full-time remote worker, my favorite moments throughout the year are the times that I get to leave my house and meet with partners and colleagues face-to-face. I look forward to those experiences, but I'm not interested in going to an office everyday just because somebody said so. There must be a purpose, and there must be something there that I can’t get at home.

Facilitating that desire to be connected to the group is the key to drawing humans to the space. One of the significant challenges of remote work has been maintaining this energy and effective collaboration among dispersed teams. AI-powered collaboration tools have bridged this gap by offering virtual environments that simulate the in-office experience.

Virtual meeting platforms, enhanced with AI features, can transcribe meetings, provide real-time translations, and identify key action items, ensuring that everyone is on the same page regardless of their location. AI-driven analytics can track team performance and engagement levels, offering insights into areas that need improvement. However, the true power of this technology is what it does to give you back your humanity and freedom to engage with your colleagues in ways that are deeper than executing tasks to meet a deadline.

Therefore, modern office design should focus on creating spaces that encourage collaboration and interaction. Open floor plans, communal areas, and dedicated collaboration zones can facilitate spontaneous discussions and idea-sharing. However, this space design needs to be flexible and nimble and allow all team members across the neurodiversity spectrum to feel comfortable and safe to be the best version of themselves.

By incorporating wayfinding, desk scheduling, and dynamic environmental control technologies into an employee app, it's possible to create these experiences that enable teams to work in the best ways to support the individuals on that team. Moreover, integrating natural elements, such as plants and natural light, can create a more inviting and relaxing space.

Leveraging AI and machine learning data from building management systems is a great way to analyze employee behavior to curate these environments for your team members and promote employee well-being. In addition, AI-driven scheduling tools can help manage office occupancy levels, ensuring that employees can work in the office on days when their presence is most beneficial.

[Integrators and AI]

In a sense, it makes it easier for team members to organize themselves around the time and space that fits that team best. These tools can also optimize the use of office space, reducing overhead costs while providing employees with the flexibility they need. When the physical space can support this, the humans will fill in the blanks necessary to come together on their own terms.

Challenges and Opportunities

By harnessing the power of AI, companies can enhance team collaboration, streamline the organization of work products, and create office environments that support human connection. Yes, AI-driven tools enable employees to work more efficiently, stay connected, and access the information they need to succeed. Yet the greatest benefit of these tools and technologies is the liberation they provide to be human again.

As we move forward, it is essential for organizations to embrace technological advancements and adopt flexible work models that cater to the diverse needs of their workforce. By doing so, they can create a more dynamic, innovative, and productive work environment that not only meets the demands of the present but also paves the way for future success.

[Product Review: Shokz OpenMeet UC Presents New Twist on Office Headset]

The lines between the physical and the virtual office space will continue to blur, but in order for the physical space to remain relevant, it has to elevate the human experience and be a place where team members want to be. More specifically, it needs to be a space where colleagues want to come together because it facilitates their humanity. As organizations mandate a return to the office, it is crucial that we take advantage of available data and technology and configure office spaces in a way that supports these desires for human connection.

Ultimately, the key to a successful return to the office lies in finding the right balance between leveraging technology and fostering human connections. By prioritizing both, organizations can create a thriving workspace where employees feel valued, engaged, and empowered to achieve their full potential.

The world of AV integration isn’t what it used to be. A casual conversation I had with industry folks over the past few days only reinforced what’s been clear for some time: The landscape is shifting, and not everyone is keeping up.

[Viewpoint: Make Room for 'Digital Electricity']

The number of AV integrators is shrinking, either merging into larger companies or disappearing altogether. And while the reasons vary, a big one is simple: resistance to change. The industry has long been comfortable with the status quo, but comfort zones don’t last forever.

Years ago, many of us warned that a pivot was necessary. But much like Aesop’s The Ant and the Grasshopper, too many were focused on making easy money while ignoring the need to evolve. Now winter has come, and those who didn’t prepare are struggling.

Rose-Colored Glasses

If you’ve been following industry reports from AVIXA, you might think everything is fine. Their projections predict nearly $100 billion in growth over the next five years, with messaging that makes it sound like there’s nothing but blue skies ahead. And for some integrators, that's absolutely true.

Here’s the problem: That kind of messaging doesn’t help integrators who need to make hard decisions. AVIXA has spent years telling everyone how great business is, how much revenue is coming, and how AV is the future. While the numbers back their forecasts, the part of the message I believe they needed to hit harder was highlighting the risks of complacency and encouraging companies to evolve.

While so many industry experts have viewed our industry through rose-colored glasses, they've missed a critical point: The industry is changing, and not everyone will survive that change. Growth isn’t evenly distributed; it’s going to companies that understand IT, software, and automation, not just the old-school integrators still focused on project-based hardware sales.

[Blueprint for Success: The 'I' in Team]

Part of the problem is also that the AV industry prides itself on its technical expertise, but its approach to professional certification remains largely insular. Rather than promoting its standards and credentials to external stakeholders—such as architects, general contractors, and building owners—the industry focuses on certifying its own members.

This inward-looking approach limits the perceived value of AV credentials outside the industry, making it harder for AV professionals to gain the recognition they deserve in larger construction and technology projects. If those outside the AV world understood how certification establishes expertise, it could elevate the industry’s standing and ensure AV specialists are involved earlier in key decision-making processes.

Outward Advocacy

Other industries have taken a different approach, ensuring their credentials and expertise are well-known beyond their immediate membership. The Consumer Technology Association (CTA), for instance, actively lobbies Congress on behalf of its members, influencing regulations and promoting the value of its industry to a much wider audience. Similarly, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) ensures that fire safety standards are understood and mandated across industries, making their certifications a requirement in many projects.

By advocating beyond their own ranks, these organizations have elevated their industries, making certification not just an internal benchmark but an external necessity. Wouldn't it have been nice if someone had been lobbying for us as wireless microphone frequencies started to disappear?

The AV industry could benefit from a similar outward-facing advocacy group, one that doesn’t just focus on certifying those already in AV but also educates and influences the broader ecosystem in which AV operates. A dedicated effort to integrate AV expertise into construction, technology, and facility planning standards could transform the way the industry is perceived. Rather than being an afterthought in major projects, AV could be recognized as a core discipline with clear, widely accepted professional standards.

For this to happen, a major shift in approach is needed, one that actively champions AV’s role outside its own walls and ensuring that architects, project managers, and business leaders understand what AV professionals bring to the table. Until then, AV credentials will remain largely an internal affair—respected within the industry but overlooked by those who ultimately control budgets and project scopes.

Trusted Advisor Role

One of the biggest changes in AV today is that integrators need to recognize when they’re not needed. Plenty of room systems now "just work" right out of the box, and rather than resisting this reality with FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) messaging, integrators should have embraced it. The opportunity was there to become true, trusted advisors, the ones who tell customers when a simpler, more cost-effective solution makes sense. The best firms now do exactly that.

Back when I worked for an integrator, I argued that when a customer called asking for two flat-panel displays, we shouldn’t just take the order. We should dig deeper, ask why they need them. Is it for digital signage, videoconferencing, some other networked application?

Too often, the industry just sold whatever was asked for, no questions asked. That kind of transactional thinking doesn’t work in a world where AV, IT, and digital experiences are blending into one. Consider the top integrators today—it’s a far shorter list, and the most successful ones are deeply engaged in IT, video, system management, and more. They’re not just box-pushers, they’re solution providers.

Back to the Future

And if you think things are stabilizing, think again. AI-driven systems are now capable of performing room checks and fixing issues without human intervention. That’s not some distant future—it’s happening now. If you’re an integrator and you’re not familiar with the startup doing that, well, that's a problem.

I'll give you a hint—check out NetSpeek. It won a ton of awards at ISE earlier this year. Full disclosure: I was an early advisor to the startup. Having said that, give it a look and make your own decisions.

[Tech Perspectives: The Power of Intimacy]

Whether you love them or hate them, this is your warning that AI management is coming. What is your firm doing to prepare for that change?

The future of AV integration isn’t about clinging to old ways, it’s about adapting. Learning IT, networking, programming, and automation is no longer optional. The best integrators aren’t just surviving change, they’re using it to their advantage. The question is, will you?

Apparently, most workers prefer their own tech, thank you very much. However, that's not a good thing, as it opens up companies to cybersecurity and compliance issues.

New research from global technology solutions provider Diversified reveals that companies are underinvesting in workforce technologies such as videoconferencing tools, collaboration platforms, and advanced production and broadcast solutions—and that puts productivity and employee well-being at risk.

The Diversified Technology Maturity Survey of more than 1,600 U.S. employees found 89% of workers use their own devices or apps for work due to better ease of use compared to company-provided options. Nearly as many (88%) say their company’s tech limits creativity and problem solving, which is also a massive liability for businesses.

With globally dispersed teams relying on collaboration tools, technologies, and broadcast events, 77% of survey respondents said they work for companies offering hybrid work options. The vast majority (92%) split their work weeks between the office and remote locations—something most prefer.

A strong majority said workplace flexibility is critical, with 86% considering it when job hunting, and 49% willing to sacrifice pay for hybrid work. Even more leaders (69%) would do the same.

The survey also uncovered a desire to reinvent workspaces to boost creativity, security, productivity, and retention. Notably, 73% of CEOs seek ways to repurpose office space, while 83% of leaders are interested in adding public-use areas.

“People naturally seek in-person connection, but requiring work from an isolated cube or room offers no more collaboration than working from home," Eric Hutto, CEO, Diversified. "Mandating office returns erodes trust and loyalty. Organizations should instead create engaging spaces and a gradual and flexible increase of purposeful in-office time.”

Since the arrival of generative AI, most workplace technology conversations have focused on productivity. But workplace technology is also deeply connected to the human experience.

“The culture of work is changing, and workplace technology is a big driver of this change,” said Jason Kornweiss, SVP of advisory services, Diversified. “Now, workplace structures must be fit-for-purpose, and workplace technology needs to power experience, satisfaction, and productivity, regardless of where people work.”

According to 60% of respondents, technology integration issues adversely affect their work-life balance, while 76% feel that they must be online at all times and 24% of those working late said it’s because their tech causes delays.

Those results have important implications for productivity as well as employee satisfaction and retention. An estimated 27% of U.S. employees quit in 2023, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, and lack of work-life balance was among the top three reasons why.

[Keeping Up with Hybrid]

Modern AV solutions and collaboration technologies amplify voices and enable flexible work, expanding opportunities for a broader talent pool. Notably, the Department of Labor reports that the number of disabled adults participating in the labor market has doubled over the last five years due to hybrid work. Nearly all survey respondents (92%) said they feel stronger connections with their children when working from home, better supporting their emotional and educational needs.

“The necessity for remote and hybrid work over the last five years rewrote the employee-employer contract,” Hutto noted. “Now people have different expectations, technology continues to evolve, and it’s time to embrace fit-for-purpose structures and new tech-enabled experiences that bring people together—whomever and wherever they are—and keep them coming back.”

There were two letters that dominated the CES 2025 floor and panels: A and I. From baby-care solutions to automated lawn mowers, AI is everywhere—and sports is no different.

At the "AI Strategies from the World’s Most Effective Sports Brands" panel at CES 2025, moderator Josh Walker, CEO, Sports Innovation Lab, led an engaging conversation about how AI is shaping aspects like personalization, interactive media rights, and new monetization opportunities in sports. He was joined by Jonathan Adashek, SVP, marketing and communications, IBM; Peter Scott, chief strategy officer, Play Anywhere; and Karina Kogan, chief marketing officer and president, iR Studio, Infinite Reality.

Walker opened the discussion with the idea of the "fluid fan." Fans are now open to change more than ever before—they are empowered to choose in an era where you can watch anything you want almost anytime you want, whether it is live television, streaming, or other content platforms.

[CES Keynote Explores Audio Evolution]

The fluid fan has created a challenge: Consumers are continuously evolving, so it's harder to target fans because their behaviors change as technologies change. That’s why, Walker explained, you have to understand the industry you are working in to apply AI. The more you learn about your consumer, the larger an advantage you have.

So, how is AI going to change sports?

Scott suggested that AI can be used to conceptualize content to be delivered to the viewer while they are watching live video or sports. Maybe one day there can be a personalized channel just for the viewer that consists of their favorite sports teams. But that starts with understanding and demystifying the technology—in this case, artificial intelligence.

“If you have anxiety about something, just start playing with it,” Scott said, challenging the audience to download ChatGPT and start dabbling. “It is super powerful and unbelievably useful. AI will change everything we do.”

Kogan’s Infinite Reality, which acquired the Drone Racing League about nine months ago, is an immersive technology company that built a platform that gives sports fans the ability to build augmented reality, immersive worlds, and 3D spaces. The platform uses AI to democratize access to spatial computing technology, which normally requires a lot of training, and enable everyone—no matter their level of tech savviness—to build an immersive experience or become game developers and world builders.

[Walk. Crawl. Run. Keeping up with AI in 2025]

As Scott noted, we know in the world of sports the money comes things like concessions, ticketing, and merchandising. How does AI disrupt the media rights business in sports? It can help create new kinds of deals—like adding betting odds to an NBA game, for example, to bring in new viewers and generate revenue. AI can also add corporate logo overlays or personalized advertising into the immersive, virtual worlds and streams.

If AI can leverage contextual experiences on a 1:1 basis, the possibilities are endless and a win-win. Rights holders will see AI as an opportunity and not a threat, while consumers will be hyperserved with a personalized sports world at their fingertips.

IBM is no stranger to AI, as one of the pioneers of using it in its coverage of golf and tennis. Adashek pointed to IBM's watsonx solution, calling it an approach of solving problems together with clients and using GenAI to take advantage of opportunities. With watsonx, IBM hopes to change sports threefold: how fans engage, how players perform/athletes compete, and how the back office of an organization operates.

How do you get there? Data. Most companies today, Adashek observed, utilize less than 50% of their data. Now, we have the ability to unlock all that data.

“The only way to do it is with AI,” he said. “First thing that must happen is getting your data right. If you don’t get your data right, you’re going to get in a deeper hole and be further behind.”

[The Year of Now: CES Panel Explores Gen AI and Marketing in 2025]

“With all new technology, this is the reality,” Kogan said. “Adapt or die. There is so much precedent of technology coming in and everyone freaking out and everything being okay.”

Kogan pointed to the advent of blogging and how journalists thought it would change everything and eliminate their jobs. But they, too, survived and the content creator space was democratized.

A longtime New York Knicks fan, Kogan would have to pay $2,000 every night to go to the game and sit where she wanted to. Now technology brings you closer to the action. “Why would you, as the rights holder, not take advantage of that?”

Scott agreed and feels that there will be some FOMO about getting on the AI train, especially in media rights libraries. Libraries can be sold to Gen AI platforms where new rights fees will be available.

Today, it is possible to produce convincing, realistic, full-motion videos using generative AI. Attorney Sid Bose knows plenty about GenAI. That’s because he's the chair of Ice Miller's Data Security and Privacy Practice in Indianapolis, and he counsels clients on compliance, cybersecurity, and privacy on a daily basis.

[Integrators and AI]

“There’s really a tremendous amount of use cases for AI in the Pro AV space,” said Bose. “When we speak particularly about the idea of generative AI and the possibilities that it provides, there's a lot of content that is coming out of AI engines and AI platforms: Everything from multimedia, descriptive content, language translations, and even just written material is being heavily produced within AI.”

But when does using AI to create content potentially cross the line on ethical grounds? “The primary concern for a lot of commentators and users of AI is just the general idea of taking the human out of the loop,” Bose told SCN. “When we think of a video or something as simple as a written paragraph, substituting human judgment and know-how for what is essentially an algorithm gives rise to a lot of concerns on many different fronts.

"If you think of AI as a ‘monkey see, monkey do’ scheme, the quality of an AI’s output relies on the quality of the data that it's fed and trained on to be able to generate the content that it does. The question then becomes do you trust how the AI tool has been trained? And are you relying on whatever's coming out of the AI tool with minimal or very little oversight from a human being? That certainly raises a lot of potential ethical issues for a lot of folks and organizations.”

The legal lines that AI-generated content may cross also concerns Bose. For example, consider copyrighted intellectual property created by humans. “There's a lot of commentary out there about the training of AI tools,” he offered. “Many publishers and authors who have created content suspect that their creations are being used to train AI tools. In the process of doing this training, some of the content that's being generated out of these AI tools may reflect some of the originally authored content used for training purposes. And so intellectual property issues are another big area of concern when it comes to generative AI.”

Privacy is another legal issue that could crop up with the use of GenAI. According to Bose, any time you submit information to an AI platform, it might be confidential, proprietary, private, or sensitive—and that information could be inadvertently disclosed to an unauthorized user by the AI engine. "So, there are huge implications from a privacy standpoint, a confidentiality standpoint, and possibly even a trade secret standpoint," he added.

How well is the Pro AV industry dealing with these AI-related ethical and legal issues? "I think it's a mixed bag," Bose admitted. "I think there are certain companies and organizations within the AV industry that are getting very sophisticated about these issues and starting to address them. At the same time, there's a certain demographic that isn't nearly as sophisticated as this, and I think that this is understandable.

[On Your Business: AI's Impact in Pro AV]

"So, a lot of times my answer is going to be the 'lawyer' answer: It really does depend on the sophistication of the organizations, and the use cases around AI within those respective companies, that are ultimately going to dictate how well they're handling these issues. Because generative AI is so new, its capabilities are still being fleshed out and understood to this day, which is why I don't think we're going to solve these issues anytime soon."

NOW AVAILABLE! AV Technology Manager's Guide to Collaboration 2025

38 Thought Leaders | We asked industry experts to share insight into trends, and AV and IT solutions that continue to shape the modern workplace, wherever it may be.

AV/IT Teams | Check out how 500 classrooms in one school district digitally enhanced learning opportunities that leverage the latest interactive tools and enable centralized, system-wide control.

6 Case Studies | Cutting-Edge Upgrade for a Historic Hall | A New PTZ Perspective for Sporting Arenas | Partnership Powers the Future of Collaboration | Managing Multipurpose Presentation Spaces | Video Wall Helps Build a Better Boardroom | Conference-Goers Enjoy Improved Accessibility

39 Products That Facilitate Collaboration | PTZs, Interactive Displays, In-Ceiling Microphones, All-in-one Video Bars, Switchers, Headsets, Projectors, Ultra-wide Displays, Collaboration Systems, Voice-lift, Encoders and Decoders, Mounting Systems, Scheduling Software, and many more.

Read more!

SCN: How long have you been with this company, and what are your responsibilities?

Dr. Peru Dharani: I have been at Barco for nearly three years, and I am currently responsible for leading the corporate innovation function of Barco.

[Executive Q&A: A Decade of Innovation]

SCN: How is Barco celebrating its 90th anniversary?

PD: We celebrate by looking back at our legacy with pride and responsibility on how we have contributed to the various technology streams we were part of. At the same time, we look toward the future with equal enthusiasm and aspiration on how we can bring value to our markets and our customers by doubling down on our technology vision.

SCN: The Pro AV industry knows Barco for its extensive display and meeting room solutions, but what other markets do you serve?

PD: At present, Barco serves a wide range of customers across cinemas, immersive experiences, enterprise meeting room solutions, control room solutions, diagnostics, and surgical solutions.

SCN: How is AI impacting Barco’s product line?

PD: AI has obviously a lot of impact in our industry and in our markets. It brings in a lot of possibilities for the products we make today and for the products we are making for tomorrow. It can bring in a lot of efficiency to our compute workflows and in raising the bars in creating more effective insights.

[Barco Control Rooms Gets More Secure—Here's How]

SCN: At InfoComm, I was told Barco’s QDX was the “future of projectors.” What makes this new model so unique?

PD: At the time of its release, the QDX is the world's most compact and lightest projector in its category, with everything at hand to maximize your ROI. Reuse existing gear and TLD+ lenses—and benefit from its integration in Barco’s suite of smart peripherals and software tools. Thanks to our patented, next-generation Pulse electronics with higher bandwidth up to 8K@60Hz or 4K@240Hz and more processing power, you’ll get smoother images and sharper pixels.

SCN: What are some of the important features for projectors that will be used in high-end simulation applications?

PD: For simulator projectors, lifelike images are critical. Trainees typically see their visuals from up close and notice any inaccuracy immediately, which means that the feeling of immersive reality is easily shattered. Resolution, combined with appropriate refresh rate and brightness, needs to be high enough to accurately portray the details of the real world. In multi-projector setups for simulators, badly composed surfaces can quickly lead to negative training experiences. This is where blending and warping technology come in. Edge blending is the alignment of the projectors to remove the visible borders of the overlapping images for a seamless viewing experience. With Barco Pulse, warping and blending capabilities are embedded in the projector software.

SCN: Barco offers several immersive systems, but what is your overall approach to delivering an immersive experience?

PD: Immersive experiences are popping up everywhere. We see breathtaking exhibitions with floor-to-ceiling digital artworks, theme parks with thrilling rides that bring your favorite cartoon figures to life, and planetariums with starry domes that suck you right into the universe. We serve across projection mapping, live events, museums, theme parks, houses of worship, planetariums, and more with our broad portfolio.

At the end, we see that everything around us is a blank canvas. With projection mapping projectors, you can make anything completely change color, texture, and shape. Through the artistic play with light, projection mapping can create the optical illusion of movement on any display surface. It is a visual feast, a new kind of fireworks, an extraordinary form of immersive entertainment with an enormous wow factor.

[What's In Your Conference Room?]

SCN: Is interest in hybrid conference rooms fading or are they becoming more important?

PD: I would say they are getting more important, especially after the pandemic. Hybrid working (in many variants) is becoming the norm now, and it very much benefits both the employee and the employer. This brings even more emphasis on the need for having the right tools and devices within hybrid conference rooms.

SCN: What was the thinking behind ClickShare, and how have customers responded?

PD: Today, less than 15% of all meeting rooms are video-enabled, according to Frost & Sullivan research. With the ClickShare Bar, Barco has introduced a future-proof solution to modernize offices with smaller to medium-sized, video-first meeting spaces that fully cater to the needs of hybrid working. With only one device needed to equip an entire space alongside a display, the deployment for IT managers is significantly simplified, and the installation cost is reduced. Customers have embraced the powerful, all-in-one device that minimizes points of failure, since all collaboration, audio, and video functionalities are consolidated into a single, easy-to-use solution.

SCN: How is Barco addressing sustainability?

PD: Sustainability is a mindset. From producing energy-efficient solutions for different industries to ensuring the ongoing personal development of our teams and the communities they live in, Barco considers sustainability as a key pillar of its work. We aim to:

• lower our own environmental footprint and those of our customers.

• invest in sustainable employability by enabling careers that are engaging, enriching, and healthy.

• build an inclusive workplace that embraces the diversity of our people.

• play an active role in the communities we operate in by upholding the highest ethical and quality standards.

• deliver added value to our customers through our solutions, services, and capabilities. We help ensure more people can participate in and benefit from the innovation society.

[Sustainability: A Pro AV Progress Report]

SCN: What’s next for the Pro AV industry?

PD: Like many other industries, the Pro AV industry is undergoing its own transformation in the face of both digital and AI-related technologies. At the same time, the demands for high quality visualization and collaboration solutions continue to inspire us to bring effective solutions to our customers. We are working on various topics like advanced optical technologies, energy efficiency, and workflow optimization solutions. We are also keeping a close tab on the zeitgeist of today when it comes to customer preferences and cultural choices driven by our society in the face of many changes in the world. All those choices will definitely impact the AV industry directly or indirectly, and we should be ready for those new demands that will be coming our way.

NOW AVAILABLE! AV Technology Manager's Guide to The State of AV/IT 2025

AV/IT Teams | A multi-year control, distribution, and switching retrofit for one Tar Heel State university combines elegant aesthetics with cutting-edge capabilities.

38 Thought Leaders | We asked industry experts to share their best advice for end users looking to evolve legacy (or even newer) AV systems, insight into the state of AV/IT today, and thoughts on where the industry is headed.

5 Case Studies | Delivering Seamless Productions in Stunning LED | AV-over-IP Solution Raises the (Sports) Bar | Empowered Communication for an Energy Giant | Outfitting an Immersive Shopping Experience | Any Game, Any Time in Big Sky Country

35 Products That Matter | Networked AV/IT products, including: A cloud-enabled centralized management platform, AV-over-IP firmware upgrade, 4K@60Hz IP KVM matrix, All-in-one conferencing device, PTZ cameras with built-in AI analytics, AVoIP distribution platform, Self-managing, 2.4GHz digital wireless system, and more.

Read more!

Ripley's Aquarium of Myrtle Beach in South Carolina launched its AI Interactive Penguin Exhibit. To bring the interactive AI kiosk experience to life, Ripley Entertainment has engaged VUIX AI for a new level of interaction and education to visitors at Ripley’s Penguin Playhouse, offering immersive, multilingual engagement with the aquarium's beloved penguins.

VUIX AI, a collaboration between Immersive Arts and Smart Matter AI, is a software and hardware solution that enhances guest experiences at attractions, hospitality venues, and cultural properties worldwide. At Ripley's Aquarium, the VUIX AI kiosk allows guests to ask any question about the penguins and receive instant, accurate responses from a custom Ripley's Animal Care Team member avatar, providing a dynamic and personalized experience for every visitor.

[Check Out How the Cosm Dome Is Reinventing Watching Sports]

In just over two months since its installation, the VUIX AI kiosk at Ripley's Aquarium has successfully answered over 10,000 penguin-related questions from guests, with a portion of these interactions conducted in languages other than English. The VUIX AI kiosk supports over 20 languages, ensuring accessibility and inclusivity for all visitors. The success of the audience engagement technology is a testament to storytelling with a unique and inclusive guest experience.

Beyond providing informational support, the powerful AI technology behind VUIX AI can also be integrated with point-of-sale, wayfinding, reservation, and management systems, offering operators a comprehensive tool to enhance guest services and streamline operations.

Ripley Entertainment and VUIX AI are excited about the potential to expand the interactive AI technology across other Ripley’s locations, to create new guest experiences. As this ongoing relationship develops, visitors can look forward to more groundbreaking AI-driven exhibits in the future.

[You Have to Check out the 'Most Immersive Ride in the World']

“We are thrilled with the innovative collaboration and the impact that VUIX AI has had on guest engagement," said Josh Cohen, founder of VUIX AI and Immersive Arts. "With over ten thousand questions being answered in a two-month period, we know we’ve created a successful turn-key AI system for Ripley’s and other attraction operators. Our technology extends beyond experiential guest engagement, as it can be utilized to automate daily operational tasks and drive revenue, via integration with a property’s wayfinding, point-of-sale, reservation, or management systems.”

NOW AVAILABLE! AV Technology Manager’s Guide to Why Image Matters

29 AV/IT Thought Leaders from the AV/IT industry were invited to weigh in on what end users need to know about today’s displays, applications, content, cost of ownership, flexibility—and even what to expect from future tech.

AV/IT Team: Check out how the team at SAVI Controls has created what may be the most advanced commercial AV experience center for dealers and end customers.

8 Case Studies: Pro Displays Shine in the Sunshine State | Focal Point | Curved Video Wall Project Takes Flight | Vegas Casino Goes All in On Content Control | High-Bright and Beautiful Screens | Serving Up an Immersive Visual Feast | Sustainability and Design Across the Pond | A Crystal-Clear Gateway to Collaboration

43 Products Come into Focus: Fine-pixel-pitch LED Video Walls, All-in-One Displays, KVMs, Content Management Systems, a 98-inch 4K Display, SDVoE Transmitter/Receiver, Multi-viewers, Interactive Displays, Projectors, Digital Signage Players, and much more!

 Read more!

NOW AVAILABLE! AV Technology Manager’s Guide to All Things Audio

15 AV/IT Thought Leaders from the AV/IT industry were invited to share their insights and sound advice on all things audio.

AV/IT Team: Check out how the team at Duke Kunshan University ushered in a new era of immersive audio.

9 Case Studies: From immersive audio at an international airport to special audio at a cultural center, an outdoor classroom, and a private event hosted by World Wrestling Entertainment, check out these outstanding examples of cutting-edge audio solutions.

25 Products That Matter: Because without audio, there’s no there [videoconferencing], there, or anywhere.

BONUS! InfoComm 2024 Best of Show Winners: We celebrate the InfoComm 2024 Best of Show winners for AV Technology, Digital Signage, and our sister publication, Tech & Learning.

Read more!

While artificial intelligence has been used in AV products such as microphones and PTZ cameras for more than three years, today, there’s hardly an AV product category where AI isn’t impacting. AV companies use AI daily to develop new and further enable traditional solutions. We’re entering uncharted territories. Some solutions allow the programming of graphical user interfaces and control logic code; cameras learn facial identities for more immersive meetings; transcription services can accurately translate multiple languages in real-time; digital signage provides and delivers more targeted information; and so much more. Below are just 25 AV/IT solutions where AI plays a pivotal role in its function. I can’t wait to see what the next six months will bring.  

22Miles’ AI Command

AI Command by 22Miles revolutionizes visual communications management with natural language commands, making creating engaging, user-friendly, and scalable experiences easy. The intuitive chat interface streamlines content editing, simplifying complex tasks within your CMS. With integrated player commands, users can execute functions without navigating complex menus. AI Command’s seamless integration into the 22Miles Content Manager ensures a unified, efficient and familiar customer experience. 22Miles AI Command offers a powerful, conversational AI interface that transforms how organizations interact with, control, and personalize their content across their digital AV ecosystems.

Aurora Multimedia ReAX Core Studio AI

Aurora’s Multimedia’s ReAX Core Studio AI is a professional-grade software for creating graphical user interfaces and control logic code. AI will now allow a programmer to enter in the required parameters, and in seconds JavaScript code will appear for use. This will make programming quicker and easier, and will educate new programmers on how to code for circumstances of varying complexity. The intuitive drag-and-drop interface allows for easy and flexible design, while enabling rapid duplication and reuse of code blocks. Control programs are published to any ReAX capable control system as a web page. Best of all, ReAX Core Studio is available for free—no purchase fee, registration fee, or certification fee. 

AVer MD120UI

AVer’s MD120UI is highly versatile and explicitly designed for patient monitoring and telemedicine. The MD120UI is equipped with cutting-edge AI technologies that streamline the monitoring process, enabling healthcare providers to remain attentive to patient needs. With its 20X optical zoom and 4K imaging capabilities, coupled with an IR night view function, the MD120UI delivers crystal-clear visuals and 24-hour monitoring with no blind spots. The MD120UI features additional helpful functions, including fast focus speed for seamless patient viewing and embedded microphones, which capture all sounds in the patient room and transmit them to the nursing station in real-time. 

Crestron 1 Beyond Cameras

Newly released 1 Beyond Cameras by Crestron capture everyone in the room clearly. With 1 Beyond PTZ cameras’ broadcast-quality video and optical zoom up to 20x, AV/IT teams can be confident that they are bringing in-room participants closer without losing resolution. The 1 Beyond cameras deliver a premium experience for both in-person and remote participants that matches the level of professionalism required for meeting room discussions, classroom lectures, or auditorium presentations. 1 Beyond cameras work with Microsoft Teams Rooms and Zoom Rooms software to bring a one-touch join experience to your medium and large rooms with clear, crisp, intelligent video.

DTEN Vue Pro Meeting Camera System

DTEN’s Vue Pro Meeting Camera System is a set of side-mount cameras that work in tandem with AI technology to further enhance video coverage, clarity, and convenience for D7X Series All-in-One Video Meeting appliances. Vue Pro 4K cameras can be installed in seconds and are cleverly designed to capture in-room participants at eye level, providing up to four additional cameras to provide eye-to-eye connections for in-room participants to interact with remote colleagues. Additionally, Vue Pro’s 4K camera lens systems utilize advanced, smart-framing AI to identify and dynamically frame participants with crisp headshots, regardless of distance from the front-of-room system.

ENCO enCaption 

ENCO’s fifth-generation, AI-enhanced enCaption is an automated captioning and transcription solution for AV applications. enCaption makes it fast, easy, and cost-effective for AV professionals, and content producers, create transcripts and add closed or open captions to both live and pre-recorded AV content in 45 languages, combining machine learning with advanced speech-to-text conversion and grammatical structure analysis to deliver exceptional accuracy with extremely low latency. enCaption automates open captioning with speed and accuracy for live meetings, presentations, classes/lectures and events.

EPOS IMPACT 700

The IMPACT 700 by EPOS is an on-ear, wired USB headset which uses industry-leading microphone technology to deliver rich, natural sound, no matter the level of background noise.

With a rich feature set powered by second-generation EPOS AI, which runs continually within the headset, the IMPACT 700 is designed to isolate and relay incoming and outgoing voices with complete clarity. IMPACT 700 headsets are carefully crafted with a lightweight design and soft memory foam earpads to deliver unprecedented levels of comfort for extended use. Additionally, to protect users’ hearing from all-day audio exposure, the IMPACT 700 leverages best-in-class passive noise dampening and EPOS ActiveGard, which works to prevent loud spikes of sound and supports noise-at-work compliance.

Insta360 Connect

Insta360’s Connect is an all-in-one, dual-camera video bar designed for small- and medium-sized meeting rooms, delivering exceptional audio and video quality that will transform your meetings. Insta360’s first-ever video bar, Connect, seamlessly blends cutting-edge hardware and AI algorithms to provide an immersive and realistic experience for both in-room and remote participants. Connect boasts a dual 4K camera setup, consisting of a wide-angle camera and a telephoto gimbal camera. The two work seamlessly together, capturing 4K group views and individual close-ups for unparalleled visuals. With a 14-microphone array and a cutting-edge 3A audio algorithm, Connect picks up voices from up to 33 feet away with balanced volume, supreme clarity, and a natural, immersive sound. 

IPEVO Vurbo.ai

IPEVO’s Vurbo.ai is a groundbreaking software that seamlessly integrates with IPEVO hardware products. This innovative pairing promises users a heightened level of functionality and convenience, revolutionizing the user experience. Vurbo.ai introduces a suite of AI-powered tools aimed at optimizing document management on both Windows and Mac platforms. With features including voice-to-text transcription, intelligent summarization, real-time translation, and AI-assisted tasks, Vurbo.ai serves as the ultimate productivity partner, speaking the user’s language in more ways than one. Instantly transforming speech into text and facilitating rapid content comprehension, this revolutionary software empowers users to reclaim up to 90 percent of their workflow time, allowing them to focus on what truly matters.

JVC Professional’s KY-PZ540 Series PTZ Cameras

The multi-award-winning KY-PZ540 and KY-PZ540N PTZ Cameras by JVC Professional are JVC’s first PTZs to incorporate a 40x focal length, and are ideal for large event spaces and instances when the need to zoom in from a distance is essential. The cameras feature JVC’s 4K imager and renowned Variable Scan Mapping technology, which dynamically scans the 4K sensor to produce a seamless and lossless image transition up to 40x in full-resolution HD. The cameras also incorporate the brand’s award-winning features, such as AI-enabled advanced SMART auto-tracking operation and NDI-supported IP-based remote operation capabilities. Additionally, presets for exposure, color, and image are included.

Kitcast 2.0

Kitcast 2.0 by Kitcast leverages powerful AI technology to optimize your digital signage experience. The AI-driven content management system automates content creation and scheduling, ensuring messages are displayed at the right time. AI analytics provide insights into audience engagement, helping you fine-tune your strategy for maximum impact. Designed for ease of use, Kitcast’s drag-and-drop interface allows anyone to create and manage stunning content effortlessly. Choose from a library of customizable templates and a wide range of content options, including videos, images, social media feeds, and live data. Whether you manage a single screen or a vast network of displays, Kitcast’s cloud-based architecture allows you to update content remotely, ensuring consistent and timely communication.

LG’s MAGNIT Boxed Set Display

LG’s MAGNIT Boxed Set Display (LAAA) delivers eye-popping visuals in a simple installation package. It leverages LG’s chip-on-board technology, whereby the LED chips are embedded directly on the printed circuit board with seven layers, making this incredible image-reproducing system also remarkably robust. Complete with LG’s Office Meeting Mode, screen sharing and AI-enhanced processing, the LG MAGNIT contains numerous high-end features that deliver a premium display experience for any type of content in any corporate environment.

Logitech’s MeetUp 2

Logitech’s MeetUp 2 is the modern evolution of the best-selling conference camera in Logitech history, designed for BYOD and PC-based setups in huddle and small meeting rooms. With a focus on the human experience and deeper engagement, AI-powered features like RightSight 2 draw users into virtual meetings with dynamic views, and RightSound 2 offers advanced voice equalization and noise suppression. Sustainably designed, MeetUp 2 uses 62 percent recycled plastics (higher than similar market products), low-carbon aluminum, and responsible packaging. The device offers flexibility for in-room computer or laptop connections and remote monitoring for IT, making video collaboration achievable and affordable for everyone.

MAXHUB XBoard Interactive Flat Panel Series

MAXHUB’s XBoard Interactive Flat Panel (IFP) Series—available in 55-, 65-, 75-, 86- and 92-inch sizes—provides an advanced video conferencing experience and is ideal for daily collaboration sessions. Powered by the MAXHUB MeetingOS, these displays have a built-in three-camera system with advanced AI capabilities (65-inch and above display size) as well as the ability to support active speaker tracking and auto framing. The XBoard IFP Series offers 4K touch displays with a modular PC running Windows IoT. This provides a wealth of interactive capability using a wide range of source content. To ensure superior audio quality, these displays also provide 16 built-in microphone arrays with AI noise suppression. 

MSolutions’ MS-4K81-12TR

MSolutions’ MS-4K81-12TR is a complete ultra-wide angle PTZ video camera that identifies and follows human voices with smooth face tracking. The camera automatically locks into the person speaking and follows that person’s movement. AI tracking is powered through embedded machine learning technology, which extracts the location and characteristics of each speaker. The MS-4K81-12TR pairs with MSolutions’ latest extenders and active cables, providing a complete easy-to-install video solution with long-distance USB connectivity and very low power consumption.

Navori Labs STiX 3800 Digital Signage Player 

The next-gen STiX 3800 Digital Signage Player by Navori Labs is the industry's pioneering end-to-end digital signage player, seamlessly integrating CMS, screen monitoring, and AI-driven analytics into one compact device. Equipped with the latest processors and GPU, it effortlessly supports 4K@60fps playback. The AI-enhanced VPU offers actionable insights derived from real-time audience behavior. Moreover, the device actively promotes sustainability with a durable 50,000-hour lifespan, PoE capabilities, hands-free setup, and 80 percent less electricity consumption compared to a PC.

Nureva App 

The Nureva App is designed to enhance the setup and configuration of the Nureva HDL pro series systems and manage a comprehensive range of audio device settings. This robust companion to the HDL310 and HDL410 devices provides extra convenience to IT managers and integrators, as there’s no need for a continuous internet connection, software downloads, or account creation. Currently in beta, the app includes advanced features tailored to the needs of IT managers overseeing meeting rooms and classrooms, such as a dynamic coverage map to review real-time sound event visualizations and create camera zones; and a new AI-enabled voice detection feature that enhances the sound location data for camera tracking by distinguishing voices from ambient noise.

Perifery AI+ 2.0

Perifery AI+ 2.0 offers customers a comprehensive set of AI and workflow automation tools with new capabilities, including updated transcription, metadata generation, facial and object recognition, and automatic translation. These additions streamline asset management processes, simplify technology administration, and automate content organization, enabling organizations to enhance content library visibility, boosting productivity and creativity, and helping them reach larger audiences. Serving a broad spectrum of media professionals, from content creators and post-production houses, Perifery’s AI + suite enables the media and entertainment industry to harness AI technologies and prioritize the human experience.

Q-SYS VisionSuite

The Q-SYS VisionSuite represents a shift in intelligent video solutions for educational and collaborative spaces. By integrating cutting-edge AI technology from Seervision with the robust capabilities of Q-SYS, this solution offers a sophisticated and versatile platform that redefines the standards of presentations. At its core, the collaboration between Q-SYS and Seervision establishes an AI-driven presenter tracking system that seamlessly adapts to various presentation styles. Seervision's AI accelerator, powered by computer vision, enables precise presenter tracking and framing, allowing for dynamic adjustments and customization to suit specific preferences.

Samsung WAD Series Interactive White Boards

Samsung’s WAD Series Interactive White Boards are the brand’s first Google Enterprise Devices Licensing Agreement (EDLA)-certified interactive displays. Powered by Android 13, the WAD Series—available in 65-, 75-, and 86-inch models—provides instructors and students with a seamless, intuitive experience. It provides access to educational apps through Google Play, while allowing access to Google services such as Google Classroom and Drive. It offers a natural writing experience with infrared (IR) touch and supports up to 40 simultaneous touchpoints. A three-in-one USB-C port simplifies connectivity and allows connected devices to be charged at up to 65W, and an HDMI output enables easy content sharing. Samsung’s integration of AI for automatic transcription and transcribing lesson audio into text is a significant industry development.

Sennheiser’s TeamConnect Bars

Part of the TeamConnect family, Sennheiser’s TC Bars are the most feature-rich, all-in-one conferencing devices in their class. Available in two models for different room sizes—TC Bar S and TeamConnect Bar M—they scale to the largest meeting rooms. The TC Bar S has four microphones and two speakers, while the Bar M has six microphones and four speakers. With plug-and-play setup via USB and advanced beamforming technology, they ensure freedom of movement. A 4K Ultra HD camera with AI features enhances video quality. They also offer flexible setups, onboard Dante port, multiple mounting options, remote management, brand-agnostic integration, and advanced security.

Shure’s IntelliMix Room 6.1

The recently announced IntelliMix Room 6.1 by Shure now features Stereo Acoustic Echo Cancellation (AEC) to create immersive meeting experiences. With intelligent AEC technology, echoes are detected and eliminated, enabling participants to fully engage in discussions without distraction. Stereo AEC provides left and right loudspeaker support, catering to the positional and spatial audio needs of attendees in the room, and allowing for future enhancements in meeting experiences. The Stereo AEC feature joins AI Denoiser in IntelliMix Room which eliminates unwanted sounds and disruptions in meetings by using AI to differentiate between noises and speech.

Sony Electronics’ BRC-AM7 PTZ Camera

Featuring an integrated 20x optical zoom lens, Sony Electronics’ BRC-AM7 PTZ Camera is the smallest and lightest of its type. This new 4K 60p flagship PTZ camera incorporates natural-looking PTZ Auto Framing technology, which employs AI technology for advanced recognition. This facilitates accurate and smooth automatic tracking of moving subjects. It offers a large, 1-inch sensor, powerful zoom range, and quiet pan-tilt motion. The camera also features a variable ND filter, and interfaces including 12G-SDI, HDMI, and NDI. It provides seamless integration and HDR or SDR color matching with Sony’s system cameras.

Telycam’s Explore SE Advanced PTZ Camera

Telycam’s Explore SE Advanced PTZ Camera features a 1/1.8-inch CMOS sensor with 9MP resolution and a 30x optical zoom. It delivers stunning 4K60 video through flexible connectivity methods including NDI, NDI HX, 12G-SDI, HDMI2.0 and SFP+, with genlock enabling perfect synchronization of video frames across cameras and devices. For audio input, the Explore SE supports both stereo 3.5mm line-in and mini-XLR with phantom power. Tailored for high-performance AV productions, the Explore SE boasts exceptional features, including AI-powered auto-tracking, FreeD protocol support for compatibility with various VR/AR software engines, and local recording via its MicroSD card slot.

XTEN-AV

XTEN-AV is a pioneering cloud-based audio-visual software that allows users to complete AV designs and create winning proposals on the same cloud-based platform. XTEN-AV acts as a single source of truth for all data: project, design, and sales data, and is people and machine-agnostic, helping users service existing and future customers. The platform incorporates innovative technology like VR, AI, automation, and cloud computing to synchronize data—down to the level of a single drawing in a design. Additionally, at the core of XTEN-AV lies X-DRAW, an intuitive drawing and diagramming tool that seamlessly blends design automation with AV-specific functionalities. 

Big industry events like InfoComm and NAB Show are in the rearview mirror and summer is coming closer to an end. As we head into the fall, let’s take a look at what seems to be the focus for everyone in Pro AV.

School’s in Session

It’s August and for some that means school is back, while others are clinging to those last few weeks of summer freedom. Obviously, the new age of education is at the forefront of everyone’s mind, and that ranges from hybrid learning technology to new virtual production studios to college football season.

At SCN, we went back to school in our latest issue. There is no denying that hybrid learning is still a huge focus in education, from K-12 to the UNLV campus. The days of only lecture-based learning are well behind us, and now, whether it be lessons or guest speakers, classrooms need to be ready with the latest UCC and hybrid solutions to facilitate learning in and outside the teacher’s walls.

However, there is a lot more going on inside the walls of higher education that deserve a look. There we discovered a new virtual production studio at FAU, how Solid State Logic helps upgrade audio for college recording programs, and took a deep dive into which short-throw projectors work best in the classroom. Whichever aspect you find most interesting, they all share one common theme: bringing the student and teacher closer with technology that is easy to use.

Of course, high school and college football season is on the horizon, and that means new videoboards aplenty. Daktronics and Watchfire are two companies that have been hard at work, but one thing is clear. Bigger is better, but the secret is not sacrificing any pixels in the process.

AI is EVERYWHERE

Seriously, everywhere. If you work remotely, your cameras track your position and voice. We’re seeing it used in content creation across social media. It was the topic of the keynote address at the 2024 AV/IT Summit, and it is currently the focus of Cindy Davis’s thought leader series AI & AV.

Earlier this spring, fresh off the NAB Show floor, our own Mark J. Pescatore questioned if AI is almost ordinary. After all, if you were interested in the latest PTZ camera or videoconferencing hardware, it was almost guaranteed to have some sort of AI component. In other words, AI wasn’t the story.

[Implementing artificial intelligence is changing the Pro AV industry]

However, the story has changed. Now, instead of worrying about auto-tracking features, Pro AV experts are offering insights on how to use AI not only to enhance technology, but to make connections, turn a profit, and manage the little things to allow for more innovation or creativity. It is this aspect of AI that has become more important than ever.

Collaborating on Collaboration

Much like with schools, the hybrid workplace isn’t going anywhere. Conversations surrounding what’s in conference rooms are never ending, especially with bigger displays as well as more AI-driven videoconferencing solutions.

[An Invitation for Collaboration]

However, there seems to be more of a focus on office space and real estate management than simply the technologies that are going into it. There are many different types of employees who work in many different ways. This is perhaps one of the largest takeaways from the pandemic—what I call the death of the cookie cutter employee.

Are you creating workplace equity with in-person and remote employees? Do you have the appropriate spaces—hot desks, conferences rooms, huddle spaces, or even quieter places for employees that don’t have to be on loud calls all day long. Keeping the hybrid employee happy is now a matter for Pro AV and IT professionals—and space matters.

Where Does Production Fit into Pro AV?

All you had to do was take a trip to 2024 NAB Show and you know the answer. Both Mark and I journeyed to Las Vegas for this year’s show, and we noticed a lot of familiarity on the show floor.

The broadcast convergence into Pro AV is undeniable and could arguably be the next big thing. With everything else—hybrid conferencing systems, high-quality video walls, and yes, AI—simply getting bigger and better, broadcast-quality production is an expanding opportunity for integrators.

We are also seeing a lot about the world of virtual production, having spoken with the folks at Meptik about the new WWE virtual production studio it helped create, and most recently, the aforementioned FAU studio. Our own Cindy Davis from AV Technology held a webinar on the elements of a successful virtual production studio with where a panel of experts discussed the elements needed to create successful, high-quality virtual productions at a fraction of the cost of outside studios.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the most significant technological advancement in my lifetime, and we’re only just pulling up to the launch pad of understanding the far-reaching impact it will have on every aspect of life. One could argue that the Wide World Web, CRISPR, and other revolutionary innovations are more important, but the foundations of these will reach new and unimaginable heights with AI. 

During InfoComm in June, AI and the cloud emerged from behind the smoke and mirrors and were on display in a significant number of booths. While some manufacturers and solutions providers have used and deployed both AI and the cloud in the past few years, this is the year that could be transformative.

During InfoComm, I had the chance to interview Shure’s CEO, Chris Schyvinck, she said, “The whole [AI] terminology burst onto the scene when ChatGPT entered the mainstream thought process.” The AV/IT industry and Shure have been using artificial intelligence for a few years to enhance algorithms. “If you look at something like our IntelliMix Room, it can discern the voice you want to pick up and transmit to the other location versus somebody typing on a keyboard or making a rustling sound; that’s artificial intelligence.” Machine learning is used to train the algorithm. “We use machine learning then to bring those noises back into the lab and sort of train that algorithm as to what’s the good sound, what’s the bad sound. We’ve been doing that for three years now,” she said. “Now AI is in everybody’s consciousness, and I think that’s good because there’s a lot of conversations that have to be had around the right way to use it, and where people are doing some more nefarious things, and that has to be managed and figured out and taken care of,” Schyvinck added.

After his keynote at InfoComm on AI, I caught up with Joe Pham, chairman and CEO of QSC | Q-SYS. “We’ve been using NVIDIA GPUs in our Seervision, and there’s more in the pipeline,” Pham said. “We are always evaluating NVIDIA, Intel, and all the semiconductor companies because you need to find the right fit.”

A widespread assumption was that AI is best executed at the edge. “My perspective is changing. I’ve always thought that if you want real-time audio and video processing, you need it at the edge and use the cloud for all the data analytics.” The assumption that Pham has held for more than a decade has been shaken. “The bandwidth between the cloud and the edge is so fast now. It’s not so much the technological limitation of what should be in the cloud; it may turn into more of an economic consideration. 

Aurora Multimedia’s CEO, Paul Harris is taking a measured approach. “While the cloud can be great for unifying data and overall collaboration, we all need to take a step back and look at what AV really is and how the cloud may or may not impact the client. As for AI I do think it will play a big role in AV. Control system programming will be assisted, cameras will become smarter in how it grabs the person(s) image, and sound quality in time will have the ability to properly delineate a specific person's voice will be more possible.”

“The cloud offers an extensible platform that can reach endpoints beyond the facility walls, and bring important messages straight to the people,” said Amber Ward, director of marketing at Carousel Digital Signage. “Adding AI to the mix accelerates the workflow by simplifying content creation at the front end.”

Theresa Benson, vice president of Product Management and Marketing at Mersive Technology, added, “AI is poised to revolutionize the AV field, making experiences more personalized, efficient, and immersive.”

AVT Question: Please share your insight on AI and the cloud's impact on Pro AV today and in the near future.

Thought Leader: Brad Hintze, Executive Vice President of Global Marketing at Crestron 

We had two core experiences at InfoComm 2024. One experience centered around solutions purpose-built for an organization’s most impactful spaces: C-suite meeting rooms, large conference spaces, training areas—anywhere critical decisions are made, or important information is shared. We had multiple displays and sources—most driven by DM NVX AV-over-IP technology. The technology is adaptable to any vertical, including education, enterprise, or government applications.

We also showcased our latest intelligent video solutions, including the Automate VX multi-camera speaker solution that employs visual AI for group framing, presenter, and speaker tracking, and a host of other functions. Intelligent video is a great way to ensure engagement, even among remote workers, as it captures more than conversations; it captures the emotion of the meeting. The larger systems include cameras with optical zoom, which occurs in the lens, as opposed to digital zoom, which blows up a portion of the image and reduces its clarity.

The other primary experience was based on a slightly smaller, multipurpose space. It offers a one-touch meeting experience that’s built for maximum flexibility. Visitors saw how easily platforms offered by Microsoft and Zoom work with the solutions on display, and how all of it integrates with Crestron Flex products.

We also had our hospitality solutions on display, as well as a sportsbook demo. It featured a large display that can handle up to 16 streams of sports content and showed how easily that display can be split into multiple configurations.

At the heart of all these solutions are Crestron’s five decades of experience with control solutions. With most of these systems, all that’s required from the user is one touch, and then everything happens automatically—content sharing, lights, shading, HVAC, and more.