Zoom makes its AI Companion available to paying users. You can get started with Generative AI Assistant within your existing subscription at no additional cost.

Zoom is making the Zoom AI Companion available to paying Zoom users. Those who pay for a Zoom account automatically get access to the generative AI assistant. The Zoom AI Companion is a user-tailored evolution of Zoom IQ.

The AI ​​digital assistant will be ubiquitous on the platform and can add value to meetings, chats and phone calls, emails, whiteboards and more.

multitude of novelties

In Zoom Meetings, the AI ​​Companion can quickly summarize meetings, highlight work items, and highlight important chapters in a recording. The assistant is also available during a meeting. If you arrive a little later in the meeting or have dreamed away for a while, you can ask the assistant what he or she missed. Zoom plans to introduce this functionality in the spring of next year.

With the AI ​​Companion, Zoom Team Chat has the ability to quickly generate replies based on a chat conversation. As a user, you can specify the tone and length of such an automatic reply. By early 2024, it will be possible to automatically close conversations using AI. In the coming weeks, users will already be able to request a summary of a long thread from the AI.

For whiteboards, the AI ​​Companion will help its users categorize ideas and, starting next year, also generate images. Starting this fall, the Companion will dive into the Zoom mailbox to suggest draft conversations. In Q2 2024, the option to automatically add meeting minutes will be added, and the AI ​​will be able to summarize SMS conversations and phone calls via Zoom Phone.

comprehensive talks

A full-fledged conversational interface will also appear in Spring 2024, allowing you to have a conversation with the AI ​​Companion. It then needs to understand what you need from context, and can pull back from data like past meetings and even certain third-party connected apps. In this phase, the AI ​​Companion turns into a real assistant.

For example, according to Zoom, a user can ask the AI ​​for help preparing for a meeting, including getting the status of relevant projects and summarizing important up-to-date information from past meetings, chats and documents. Zoom emphasizes that data from external applications is only available after clear approval.

In the meeting you can then talk to the assistant about all kinds of problems in real time. For example, based on a problem discussed in the meeting, the Companion can already start developing an answer that is later forwarded by e-mail. After the meeting you can of course request a summary and the next steps.

Competition with co-pilot

The Zoom AI Companion is very similar in design to the Microsoft 365 Copilot. That’s also the main competition for Zoom. The meeting specialist must therefore include data from third parties in its chatbot. This is the only way to give tips and summaries based on the overall picture.

Microsoft will generally have more company data available for an AI than Zoom, but Zoom relies on competition on price. Finally, Microsoft charges a hefty premium for Copilot features on top of an existing Microsoft 365 subscription, while Zoom integrates all features for paying users. It remains to be seen to what extent this strategy is sustainable in the long term. After all, AI queries cost quite a bit of money considering the computing power and power required. Zoom cannot charge its customers for this surcharge.