Zoom is putting all of its AI tools in one place for the ultimate productivity super-platform.
On Monday, the video conferencing company announced Zoom Workplace, an “AI-powered collaborative platform,” that houses its AI virtual assistant in addition to a bunch of new features designed to improve workflow within teams.
The video conferencing company, which became a mainstay in the era of remote and hybrid work environments, has been steadily building AI tools and features to automate tasks, summarize conversations, and draft messages for working within teams and their customers. Last March, during the 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.
Zoom’s practices came under scrutiny for the company’s policy of using customer’s data to train the technology. The issue of training data has been a controversial one, since the sophistication of generative AI tools relies on vast amounts of human-generated content, which is often obtained without prior consent or knowledge. Zoom quickly clarified its Terms of Service update by affirming it “never use[s] audio, video, or chat content for training our models without customer consent.”
Zoom Workplace has recruited its existing AI Companion to do much of the heavy lifting for planning and summarizing meetings. The interface has an Ask AI Companion feature which helps workers prepare for upcoming meetings and recap ones that have occurred. It does this by gathering and synthesizing data from across Zoom’s apps like Meetings, Mail, Team Chat, Notes, and Docs. This includes automatically scheduling and preparing for meetings based on Team Chat conversations. Zoom Workplace can also integrate data from enabled third-party apps, like Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.
Zoom Phone also got an AI upgrade so it can now provide post-call recaps and next steps, as well as prioritizing voicemails and pulling key information from voicemail and SMS messages.
The video conferencing capability, which Zoom is known for, also has some snazzy new upgrades like “AI portrait lighting” for low-light environments. Users can also now create their own backgrounds using generative AI, much like we’ve seen testing on the likes of Google Meet and Instagram.
The Zoom Workplace platform and its AI tools are of no additional cost to paying subscribers. Zoom Pro, which is the lowest tier of paid subscriptions and includes, Meetings, Mail and Calendar, and AI Companion access costs $15.99 per month or $13.33 annually.
