Zoom has announced “Ask AI Companion”, a new conversational interactivity with its flagship AI service.
Announced at this week’s Enterprise Connect, it is built into the Zoom platform and integrated with supported third-party apps, users can streamline their workday, instantly access critical information, automate routine tasks, and stay informed by consolidating data from Zoom Meetings, Mail & Calendar, Team Chat, Notes, Docs, and other sources.
Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer at Zoom, said:
We have seen the positive impact that Zoom AI Companion has had on our business and our customers, transforming how we work by freeing up precious time for collaborative teamwork. Zoom Workplace with AI Companion will help solve real customer problems by bringing the core collaboration solutions into a single AI-powered platform to help improve productivity, efficiency, and the overall workday, all within the Zoom experience users trust and love.”
Ask AI Companion will also support users in preparing for and recapping meetings, displaying relevant action items, drafting agendas, and summarising chat and email threads, as well as documents. In a subsequent release following the initial launch, Ask AI Companion will be capable of retrieving relevant content from select third-party applications (if enabled by the customer) to provide even more assistance.
Ask AI Companion is native across Zoom’s new Workplace collaboration platform and and is included at no additional cost with the paid services in eligible Zoom user accounts.
AI Companion Coming To Zoom PhoneZoom Phone now features AI Companion features to enhance call productivity and follow-ups.
Users can request post-call summaries and next steps, allowing them to focus on conversations without note-taking. Voicemail prioritisation ensures urgent messages are highlighted, while voicemail task extraction extracts tasks from voicemails, simplifying next steps. Additionally, Team SMS thread summary offers a concise overview of Team SMS threads in PowerPack, enabling users to swiftly catch up after being away.
Other AI Companion UpgradesAsk AI Companion and its Zoom Phone integration aren’t the only AI Companion updates revealed at Enterprise Connect this week.
Other AI Companion enhancements across the platform will introduce new capabilities to Team Chat and Whiteboard features. In Team Chat, AI Companion saves time by offering smart scheduling, automatically detecting meeting intents in chat and suggesting meeting times. Additionally, it will expand to support 38 languages (in preview) for chat compose and thread summary features in the future.
Additionally, for Zoom Whiteboard users, AI Companion enables the production and refinement of flowcharts and mind maps with a straightforward prompt to encourage ideation and creativity.
What Else Has Zoom Announced This Week?This week, Zoom also announced Zoom Workplace, a new AI-powered collaboration platform that brings several key solutions into one unified hub.
Zoom Workplace streamlines communications with a new Meetings tab for integrated workflows. Users benefit from boosted engagement with shared spaces for focused collaboration, alongside updates to the interface, backgrounds, and appearance shortcuts.
Enhanced office experiences include Smart Name Tags and Smart Speaker Tags in Zoom Rooms and direct access to Workspace Reservation, Wayfinding, and Visitor Management in the Workspaces tab.
Productivity is enhanced with document collaboration and AI-powered features in Team Chat, including sentence completion, suggested replies, and smart scheduling. New generative AI virtual backgrounds assist in creating custom meeting environments.
At a time when AI is at the forefront of innovation, Zoom Workplace offers an open ecosystem for collaboration with third-party integrations. Users can benefit from AI-powered collaboration products and features without the need to overhaul their existing tech stack, making it a cost-effective solution.
