Zoom’s new AI Companion for paid users can work as a generative AI assistant to summarize and write, among other things.
Zoom launched its new AI Companion tool for paid users that can help with summarizing, writing, or highlighting. Mentioning how repetitive tasks like preparing for meetings, catching up on a chat backlog, and writing emails can take a large portion of the workday, Zoom is positioning the AI Companion as a way to be more productive by delegating such tasks to AI.
In the official announcement blog post, the tool (formerly called Zoom IQ) is being teased as a “generative AI assistant” that will work across the Zoom platform, empowering users to make them more productive and collaborate better with their teammates.
There will be no additional cost for the AI Companion (for paid users).
You can watch the teaser video here:
Using the tool, users can choose to summarize or generate text for their replies automatically, among other things. The generative AI can be used to perform typical tasks such as making the reply longer or changing the tone. Also, if you’re joining a meeting late, you can ask the AI Companion to get you up to speed with a summary or meeting highlights.
It also supports real-time translations and transcriptions.
Organizations and meeting hosts will also have granular controls over what AI capabilities are allowed for the employees or the participants in a meeting.
There is no single LLM under the hood. Instead, Zoom has gone for a “federated” approach by incorporating Zoom’s own model, Meta’s Llama 2, OpenAI’s GPT, and Anthropic. Zoom even allows you to add your own LLMs. More details will be provided in the coming weeks.
Here are some more capabilities aimed at helping organizations cut down on rote work and meetings-related tasks:
- AI-generated analyses of recorded phone calls
- Summaries of SMS messages and voicemails
- Image generation based on existing content in Zoom Whiteboard
- Real-time feedback for presenting, talking, listening, etc.
- Summaries of meetings and extraction of action items with next steps
- Finding relevant documents and tickets from third-party applications
Zoom embracing AI and incorporating it at the base level of its paid service is a shift toward a future where tech and internet-based products are going to rely on AI capabilities more than ever. Many products can improve their delivery or function with the help of generative AI, LLMs, and machine learning.
