Zoom Video Communications today introduced Zoom AI Companion (formerly Zoom IQ). This real-time generative AI assistant is available at no extra cost to all users with paid Zoom accounts. AI Companion makes collaboration easier and more effective by eliminating repetitive tasks and other distractions. In the coming months, Zoom AI Companion is expected to add new, powerful features.
Zoom AI Companion can be used in real time across the platform. For example, before meetings, you can ask AI Companion to help you prepare with status updates on important projects; during a meeting, AI Companion provides real-time summaries to participants who come in later and can provide answer suggestions for questions asked during the conversation; and after the meeting, you automatically share minutes and action items, among other things, with AI Companion. Similar support you also get in Zoom Team Chat, Zoom Whiteboard and Zoom Mail.
"We are moving beyond the hype of generative AI by delivering tangible products and turning the industry pricing model on its head, making it easy for businesses and people like you and me to take full advantage of generative AI in our daily work," said Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. "We can't wait for our customers to get started with AI Companion. Moreover, we are very excited about our plans for further innovation based on responsible AI use."
How Zoom puts customer privacy first with generative AI
Zoom is investing in AI-driven innovation that improves user experience and productivity, while putting trust, security and privacy first.
AI Companion is disabled by default. Account administrators have control over whether or not to activate these AI features for their accounts. Zoom provides administrators and users with control over and visibility into when AI features are used or activated. By putting customers' privacy needs first, Zoom customers can use AI Companion and its features with confidence.
Modern working powered by Zoom AI Companion
AI helps participants in the following way:
With Zoom Meetings, users can view recordings faster thanks to highlights and smart chapters. They can also view summaries and follow-ups so they can easily catch up if they missed a meeting. During the meeting, if enabled by the host, participants can quickly catch up by chatting with AI Companion, which automatically generates a summary. This way, they do not have to disrupt the meeting. After the meeting, hosts can receive an automated summary to share with participants and no-shows. These capabilities help teams in different time zones to collaborate asynchronously. Planned for spring 2024 is a feature that allows users to receive real-time feedback on their performance during meetings, as well as coaching on their conversational and presentation skills.
Zoom Team Chat is essential for real-time and asynchronous work, but the volume of messages can be overwhelming. AI Companion helps users compose messages faster based on the context of a chat conversation, giving them direction on message style and size. In the coming weeks, users can expect summaries of long chat conversations, and by early 2024, users will have the ability to automatically complete sentences and schedule meetings from within a chat.
This autumn, Zoom Whiteboard users will get help from AI Companion in generating and categorising ideas. In spring 2024, users will be able to use their whiteboard content to generate images and fill whiteboard templates.
Zoom Mail users can get email drafting support in early autumn. In spring 2024, users will be able to add meeting summaries to Zoom Notes and summarise text messages and conversations with Zoom Phone.
In spring 2024, users can interact with AI Companion through a chat interface that understands the context of questions and supports users with their content on the Zoom platform, such as previous meetings, chats and selected third-party apps. AI Companion can even take action independently. For example, users can get support from AI Companion:
While preparing for a meeting, you can ask AI Companion about the status of important projects. AI Companion can retrieve the necessary information from meetings, chats, whiteboards, e-mails, documents and, with users' permission, from third-party apps to provide up-to-date updates.
During a meeting, AI Companion can provide real-time support, allowing users to better track key discussion points, create and submit support tickets on issues raised during the meeting, or suggest draft answers to questions raised during the meeting.
After the meeting, you can ask AI Companion to summarise it, automatically formulate action points and identify stakeholders so that the action points are immediately shared with them via Team Chat or, with users' permission, in third-party apps.
Easy intuitive interface
Users can integrate AI Companion into their existing work processes, such as within Meetings, Zoom Team Chat and Whiteboard. This allows them to easily use functionalities such as meeting summaries, setting up chat messages and creating whiteboards. From now on, users will also have direct access to interactive features with AI Companion Meetings via a side panel in Meetings. This access will be extended to the entire Zoom platform in spring 2024, as new functionalities are added.
