Zoom Joins the AI Chatbot Trend

Zoom unveils AI Companion: A chatbot that helps you work more efficiently

In an era where artificial intelligence is revolutionizing the way we work, communicate, and collaborate, Zoom, the renowned videoconferencing platform, is stepping up its game. In a recent announcement, Zoom declared its intention to join the AI chatbot trend, introducing an AI Companion to enhance its services and redefine virtual meetings.

Zoom, despite recent public concerns, is pressing forward with plans to introduce a ChatGPT-style chatbot into its videoconferencing platform. This AI Companion aims to enhance user productivity by assisting with various office tasks. It's a rebrand and expansion of ZoomIQ, which summarized chat threads and provided automated responses to text-based queries. In the coming year, users can engage with the AI Companion for tasks such as meeting preparation, session summary retrieval, and document searches.

Zoom envisions real-time interaction during meetings for actions like filing support tickets or researching on-the-spot inquiries. The company aims for this AI to function as a private virtual assistant, streamlining work processes. However, it also raises concerns about data privacy and the ethical implications of AI training, echoing the recent backlash that Zoom faced over AI training methods.

Zoom's AI strategy combines its proprietary large language model with Meta's Llama 2, OpenAI, and Anthropic, creating a "federated approach to AI." This approach allows the AI Companion to swiftly integrate new advancements from various models, promising innovation in virtual meetings. However, specific details about this collaboration are yet to be disclosed, as Zoom did not respond to requests for further information.

Zoom is on a mission to elevate user productivity with a suite of AI features, including conversational chatbot tools. Already accessible to paid Zoom subscribers, the AI Companion empowers users to catch up on meeting highlights and pose specific questions about meeting content. After the meeting concludes, Zoom's Companion goes the extra mile by automatically transcribing the session and organizing it into "smart chapters," accentuating key information.

Furthermore, it excels at crafting meeting summaries that spotlight crucial topics and suggest potential follow-up actions. This multifaceted AI tool promises to reshape the way users engage with and extract value from their Zoom meetings, offering a more streamlined and insightful meeting experience.

By the end of September, Zoom plans to empower its AI Companion to generate email responses, assessing tone and length. It will also summarize missed chats for a better overview. In the coming months, the AI Companion will automatically detect meeting intent from chat messages. Zoom envisions users seeking presentation feedback and tracking speaking vs. listening time in the future. These enhancements aim to revolutionize virtual meetings and productivity.

Finally, Zoom is making a renewed AI effort, addressing prior controversies about data usage for training AI models. In response to concerns, Zoom clarified that it doesn't use Customer Content, like call audio or video, for AI training. However, their latest blog post reaffirms that audio, video, chat, screen sharing, and similar customer content are not utilized in training Zoom's AI or third-party models.