Zoom puts all of its AI tools in one place, creating a super platform for ultimate productivity.
On Monday, the videoconferencing company announced Zoom Workplace, an “AI-powered collaboration platform” that includes an AI virtual assistant and a range of up-to-date features aimed at streamlining team workflows.
A mainstay in the era of remote and hybrid work environments, the video conferencing company continues to build AI tools and features to automate tasks, summarize calls and create work messages for teams and their clients. Last March, amid a flurry of generative AI product launches, Zoom released AI Companion, which acts as a personal assistant for taking notes and identifying to-dos during meetings.
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Zoom’s practices have come under scrutiny over the company’s policy of using customer data for technology training. The issue of training data is controversial because the sophistication of generative AI tools relies on extensive amounts of human-generated content, which is often obtained without prior consent or knowledge. Zoom quickly clarified the update to its Terms of Service, confirming “never apply.”[s] audio, video or chat content to train our models without the client’s consent.”
Zoom Workplace has recruited its existing AI Companion to handle most of the bulky lifting of meeting planning and debriefing. The interface has an Ask AI Companion function that helps employees prepare for upcoming meetings and summarize those that have already taken place. It does this by collecting and synthesizing data from Zoom apps like Meetings, Mail, Team Chat, Notes, and Docs. This includes automatic scheduling and preparation of meetings based on team chat conversations. Zoom Workplace can also integrate data from enabled third-party applications such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Zoom Phone has also received improved artificial intelligence, so it can now display post-call summaries and next steps, as well as prioritize voice messages and extract key information from voicemails and text messages.
The video conferencing feature that Zoom is known for also has some amazing up-to-date improvements, such as “AI portrait lighting” for apply in low-light conditions. Users can now create their own backgrounds using generative AI, much like we’ve seen in tests on platforms like Google Meet and Instagram.
The Zoom Workplace platform and its AI tools are at no additional cost to paying subscribers. Zoom Pro, which is the lowest tier of paid subscriptions and includes meetings, email and calendar, and access to AI Companion, costs $15.99 per month or $13.33 per year.
