Zoom upgrades AI companion, and wants to create super-detailed virtual avatars for your meetings

Zoom upgrades its digital personal assistant to boost your productivity

News By Craig Hale published 10 October 2024

Video conferencing giant Zoom has announced a series of AI-powered features designed to improve worker productivity, including digital avatars for those who don’t want to show their face.

Announced at its Zoomtopia 2024 event, the new releases included AI Companion 2.0, an upgraded version of its assistant, which promises to deepen the integration of generative AI within the company’s app.

Zoom AI Companion 2.0 will include a persistent side panel that integrates across Zoom Workplace, contextual understanding based on ongoing interactions and previous conversations, advanced synthesis of information from emails, calendars and uploads, web connectivity for real-time information gathering and action tracking to automatically detect and complete tasks across workflows, likening the feature to a personal assistant.

Zoom goes all-in on AI

The company confirmed that the upgraded AI Companion will roll out in the coming weeks at no additional cost for paying Zoom Workplace customers.

Further blurring the boundaries between digital and real life, mobile devices running the Zoom Workplace app can leverage AI Companion to create summaries and action items from face-to-face interactions.

To coincide with the announcement, Zoom also announced a custom add-on for AI Companion for $12 per user per month. Set to arrive in the first half of 2025, it will bring a more customized AI Studio, integration with third-party apps like Atlassian, Workday and Asana, and AI-generated avatars for Zoom Clips for presentations.

Speaking about AI Companion 2.0, CEO Eric Yuan added: “This is more than an evolution; it’s a complete overhaul of how we get things done in the digital age.”

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