What is Zoom AI Companion, and what can it do for today’s teams? Competing against solutions like Google Gemini and Microsoft Copilot, Zoom AI Companion brings generative AI technology into the daily tools teams use.

The comprehensive generative AI assistant aims to make teams more productive, efficient, and creative. Zoom believes it will even help reduce repetitive tasks that take up as much as 62% of an employee’s workday.

Just like its competitors, Zoom AI Companion leverages large language model technologies and AI algorithms to summarize and create content, process recordings, and more.

But what exactly can you do with this AI tool, and how does it stack up against the competition? I took a closer look at the features and benefits to find out.

What is Zoom AI Companion? The Basics

Zoom AI Companion is a generative AI assistant that can help users create content, such as meeting agendas, session descriptions, and speaker bios. It’s included at no extra cost with all paid Zoom user accounts, which gives it a significant edge over expensive alternatives like Copilot Pro.

Zoom AI Companion isn’t the first time Zoom has experimented with giving users an AI assistant. You might have seen me talking about tools like Zoom IQ in the past, too.

But AI Companion isn’t just “IQ” with a new name and image. It’s a comprehensive generative AI solution powered by large language models like Llama 2, Open AI, and Anthropic. This “federated” approach to the AI model differs significantly from the methods used by competitors like Google, who rely entirely on their own proprietary large language models.

Notably, while Zoom AI Companion does come included in your Zoom paid plans, it’s not switched on by default. You have to actually “turn on” the features you want before you can use them. I’ll discuss how to do that in a moment. But first, let’s look at what this AI can do.

What is Zoom AI Companion? The Features

When Zoom AI Companion was first announced, it only came with a handful of features, similar to what you’d expect from a solution like Copilot for Teams. Since then, the company has upgraded its solution to include a range of new capabilities.

For instance, the companion can create emails and meeting agendas based on prompts, summarize meeting settings, and even automatically divide cloud recordings into chapters. It can highlight discussion information, suggest key action items, and even generate ideas for whiteboards.

Currently, Zoom is still working on upgrading this tool. Most recently, we reported on the new “automatic language detection” feature added to the system and the addition of up to 36 language options.

Here’s a quick look at what Zoom AI Companion can do now.

Zoom AI Companion in Meetings

In Zoom Meetings, the Zoom AI companion can instantly summarize conversations, covering essential action items and important topics, just like Copilot for Teams. It can help you catch up on meetings by instantly summarizing what’s already been discussed.

The companion can also intelligently record meetings, organize sessions into smart chapters, summarize long discussions, highlight next steps, and more. It can even analyze critical meeting and conversation factors, like engagement level.

Plus, like Copilot, it can generate a summary of your discussion, which you can automatically share with other team members in Zoom chat or email.

In Zoom Chat, Whiteboard, and Email

In Zoom email, Zoom AI Companion is currently only capable of one thing: drafting emails for you and adapting them to your desired tone of voice. The same is true for Zoom whiteboard. Currently, the companion can only generate content, suggest ideas, and add objects to a canvas.

In Zoom Chat, the companion can also draft messages based on conversational context and prompts and customize the length and tone of each message. Plus, it can help quickly summarize the key content of longer chat threads, saving you time searching through endless messages.

The companion app can also easily schedule meetings based on chat context (such as when you say, “Let’s meet next week”).

Zoom AI Companion in Zoom Events

If you’re using Zoom to host your hybrid or online events, the companion can step in again to help with content creation. It can produce event and session descriptions, speaker bios, lobby announcements, and even images for your presentations.

Plus, when connecting with attendees, the tool can generate emails, subject lines, and calls to action using context from your Zoom Event description. It can also draft chat messages for your lobby based on your prompts, conversational context, and more.

In Zoom Phone

Like Copilot for Microsoft Teams Phone, Zoom AI Companion for Zoom Phone offers many features. It can generate call summaries based on your conversation’s recording and transcribe the discussion in real-time.

You’ll also be able to quickly access a summarized list of tasks created by the companion from voicemail transcriptions. Zoom AI Companion can even help you prioritize which voicemails to respond to based on topic or intent.

Additionally, the app can summarize SMS threads to help you generate faster responses to people you’re interacting with via mobile.

Zoom AI Companion Security

One point worth noting is that, like most companies innovating in AI, Zoom is committed to “ethical AI practices.” Initially, when the companion was released, Zoom was just recovering from backlash for its AI privacy policies.

However, Zoom has promised companies that it won’t use audio, video, or chat content shared with AI Companion to train future models. Additionally, since users can choose when and how to enable AI features for their accounts and team members, business leaders have a decent level of control.

Zoom also provides admins complete visibility into when AI features are activated and used for comprehensive peace of mind.

During meetings, for instance, hosts and participants can always see the status of in-use AI tools. With a bit of luck, these measures will help to reassure Zoom customers.

Is Zoom AI Companion Better than Microsoft 365 Copilot?

While plenty of other generative AI apps are out there, the closest competitor to Zoom AI Companion is now Microsoft 365 Copilot. On the surface, these tools are pretty similar. They both offer meeting summaries and create content for chats and emails.

Additionally, while Zoom AI Companion extends to Zoom Chat, Zoom Email, and Zoom Phone, Microsoft Copilot extends to all Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft Teams, and Microsoft Teams Phone. Since Zoom doesn’t offer as many office productivity apps (aside from Zoom Docs), you can use Microsoft’s AI assistant in more tools.

Plus, Microsoft is creating dedicated versions of Copilot for Sales, Security, and Customer Service teams. Zoom doesn’t seem to be focusing on this yet.

Another key differentiator is that Microsoft offers companies access to “Copilot Studio,” which allows them to customize their generative AI bots. There’s no bot-building or customization platform available from Zoom (at the moment).

However, Zoom does offer access to its companion for free. Microsoft charges for all of the different forms of Copilot it offers. Microsoft 365 Copilot, for instance, will cost you an extra $30 per month per user on top of the prices you pay for your Microsoft apps.

How to Use Zoom AI Companion

Now I’ve answered the questions: “What is Zoom AI companion?” and “What can it do?” you’re probably wondering how to start using it. As mentioned above, the tool won’t be activated by default in your account. Here’s how you can get started:

  • Enable AI Companion Features: Since all AI Companion features are disabled by default, an administrator must enable each feature via account and group-level settings.
  • Update the Zoom client: Once the features are enabled, each user must log into their Zoom client and ensure their toolkit is up to date. You need to be on at least version 5.16.0 of Zoom to use the features.
  • Go to your account settings: Go to your web portal account settings and look for the “AI Companion” tab. All features, with user-level settings, will allow you to toggle them on and off as required.

Once you’ve done all that, you can experiment with Zoom AI Companion on your various Zoom apps and tools. The easiest way to launch the feature is to simply click on the icon (it looks like a diamond) on the toolbar within your Zoom app.

From there, all you need to do is interact with the companion tool like you would any other generative AI app. If you’ve never used “prompts” to talk to an AI bot before, I recommend checking out this basic guide for best practice tips.

Tips for your Zoom AI Companion Experience

Like most of Zoom’s tools and many generative AI apps I’ve reviewed, Zoom AI Companion is pretty simple. However, there are some tips you can follow to optimize your experience with the service, such as:

  • Leveraging automation: If you use AI companion for things like creating meeting summaries and notes, you can set it to do those tasks on autopilot. Just head into your meeting settings from the Zoom Web Portal and click on the AI Companion tab. From there, you can toggle the option to summarize meetings automatically.
  • Experiment with prompting: Like all generative AI apps, Zoom AI Companion works best if you know how to communicate with the app. The more specific you are with your requests, the more likely you’ll get the correct output. Include specific details, like the purpose of your message or the tone you want to use.
  • Stay current: Keep track of the changing features emerging for Zoom AI Companion. The company is constantly rolling out new capabilities, like automatic language detection. Stay tuned to ensure you get the most value from your app.

What’s Next for Zoom AI Companion?

As I mentioned above, Zoom, like most of its competitors, is committed to improving the functionality of its generative AI app over time. Zoom has already shared some of its vision for the service’s future. For instance, they say during a meeting, you’ll soon be able to file support tickets and research critical information in real time with the app.

In Zoom Phone, users will be able to create automatic AI-generated analyses of recorded calls, SMS messages, and voicemails. Plus, with whiteboard, you can eventually generate entirely new images based on the existing content on your canvas.

The AI Companion will also act as a digital coach for every employee. It will offer real-time feedback on how much you talk and listen during meetings.

We’ll share more updates and insights into the companion app as it evolves, so stay tuned.

 

 



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