Zoom Adds AI Companion Tool to Enhance Actions in Video Meetings

Users of Zoom will have access to an AI assistant that can summarize your video meetings and write chat messages for you using massive language models from businesses like OpenAI. Earlier, the video conferencing app revealed Zoom IQ, a generative AI tool that it intended to distribute to a limited number of users for free. This is a no-cost benefit for paying Zoom subscribers and is currently branded as AI Companion.

The business now sees a chance to improve Zoom by making the AI helper a key component of the application—if you pay. Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim stated in the release that the company is "transcending the hype in generative AI by delivering tangible products and disrupting the industry's pricing model."

AI Companion Features

The company released a video showing the various functions of the AI ​​companion. As you can see, the assistant can create a summary of the meeting you missed or joined late. "If the meeting host allows, participants can quickly catch up  without interrupting the flow of the meeting  by subtly asking questions through the meeting AI Companion's side panel to get an AI-generated answer about what they missed," Zoom added.

After the meeting, hosts can receive an automatic meeting summary to share with attendees and those who were unable to attend. In addition, the AI ​​companion can help the user quickly compose messages based on the conversation thread. The user can then change the tone or length of the draft message with the click of a button. The same feature can also summarize a long conversation thread.

How does it make online meetings easier?

"Zoom customers can expect to see AI Companion across the platform in meetings, team chats, phone, email and whiteboard, with additional features on the roadmap," the company added. For example, a feature planned for  spring will use an AI companion to help users prepare for an upcoming meeting with details from previous sessions.

The video conferencing provider takes a "blended" approach to its AI assistant offering, meaning customers can choose which major language model they want to use for their AI partner, whether it's Zoom, Meta or OpenAI. or man-made.

The company also reiterates that it does not use "customer voice, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications" to train  AI models in response to last month's controversy over Zoom's terms of service. Zoom plans to release AI Companion for paid subscribers sometime this fall. Stay tuned for our review as we  better understand Assistant's strengths and limitations.

Google announces similar AI solutions like Zoom

Zoom's competitor Google Meet recently announced similar AI solutions. The company's Duet AI feature will soon be able to take notes for you, and if you can't attend a meeting, Duet will create notes that other attendees can view and discuss.