Off the back of Zoom’s investment in Anthropic and the launch of several new Zoom IQ updates, it was unsurprising that generative AI, and its incredible but daunting potential, was the central theme of the latest Zoom Work Transformation Summit.

Smita Hashim, Zoom Product Officer, delivered the keynote speech. Hashim, who described herself as a “technology optimist”, was enthusiastic about how AI can revolutionize the world of work.

“AI is the hot topic now across all industries,” Hashim said. “There’s so much potential for generative AI to help reduce stress, increase productivity, and ultimately deliver better business outcomes.”

Hashim cited the AI-powered capabilities already implemented across Zoom’s portfolio, from the AI-driven invention of virtual backgrounds in meetings to Zoom IQ’s ability to closed captions and auto-generated meeting summaries in Zoom IQ for sales.

Hashim underlined Zoom’s federated approach to AI and how customers can incorporate Zoom’s proprietary AI into their platforms, those of high-profile AI businesses like OpenAI, or leverage their own models. This individuality allows customers to train their AI to model their brand attributes and vocabulary.

However, Hashim also cautioned about how AI might change our world, especially with its revolution occurring so quickly. “This is a profound moment in history,” Hashim commented. “We are deeply aware that this incredible surge in AI innovation and the tremendous potential it offers across industries, while exciting, is also cause for apprehension — and rightly so.”

To illustrate Zoom’s apprehensions and how the vendor has adapted to AI being an imperfect tool, Hashim pointed out the management features that Zoom users have access to overrule AI errors. She highlighted that users could edit Zoom IQ’s meeting recaps if they believed there were mistakes.

Hashim then introduced Pascal Bornet, an AI and automation expert and author who has worked with consultancy firms EY and McKinsey.

Bornet spoke about AI’s potential and limits and suggested that we rethink how we approach AI: “I think we should consider our relationship with technology as a dual, like a colleague or partner(…) we need to create synergies with technology. How do we do that? By identifying what technology will never be good at. It’s identifying where we, as humans, will always have an edge.”

Bornet cited three distinguishing advantages humans have over technology that AI cannot replicate. The first is creativity, “real creativity”, to imagine something that has not been created before. The second is our capacity to build relationships with others; the last is critical thinking. Humans’ emotional intelligence is especially important, as “emotions are something that technology will never master,” Bornet said.

Bornet then suggested three key components for successfully leveraging generative AI, including using AI’s power to evolve our capability of creating relationships. The second component cited was supporting decision-making, especially group decision-making. Bornet’s third use case was utilizing AI to foster communication and information.

Hashim summarised the underlying point of the keynote neatly, providing sage advice for businesses looking to invest in AI: “Give AI a seat at the table. Know what it is good at and what it is less good at and learn from experimenting and task force.”

Zoom and its AI Projects

Zoom has been explicit in its commitment to federated AI and has launched several solutions and formed partnerships that illustrate this ambition.

Last week, Zoom partnered with AI safety and research business Anthropic to build sophisticated and reliable AI systems. The collaboration will expand Zoom’s federated approach to AI by integrating Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, with Zoom’s collaborative platform. Zoom Contact Centre will be the first solution to be integrated with Claude.

Zoom Ventures, Zoom’s startup investment offshoot, also announced it had invested in Anthropic.

As well as its investment in Anthropic, Zoom launched new generative AI features earlier this year to help users compose emails and chat messages. The new solution, built into Zoom IQ, is powered via a partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI and will summarise chat threads and produce meeting agendas, the use cases that Hashim touched upon in her keynote on Thursday.

The collaboration between Zoom’s Anthropic and OpenAI partnerships allows the tech giant to update Zoom IQ with new features designed to streamline workflows and equip users with relevant information.

However, among the new features, thanks to both Anthropic and OpenAI partnerships, is Zoom IQ’s new capability to summarize in real-time what users might have missed if they had joined a Zoom meeting late. They can then ask the AI further questions.

If a user needs to create a whiteboard session for their meeting, Zoom IQ can generate one based on natural language prompts. After the session ends, Zoom IQ will summarize the meeting and post that recap to Zoom Team Chat. Zoom IQ can also suggest the next steps for leaders to take into account.

Zoom Team Chat was also updated with new AI-powered features. Zoom IQ provides thread summaries for users who missed a busy period of conversation and want to save time rather than scanning through every message.

Generative AI enables Zoom to generate content suggestions for email responses. Zoom IQ assists users by reading meeting summaries with customers and taking into account already completed tasks. Zoom IQ can extrapolate context and content from Zoom Team Chat to produce meeting agendas.



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