Zoom extends AI Companion as it hits million meetings milestone for summaries

Just weeks after announcing that it was looking to transcend the hype surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) and help improve collaboration and productivity through the launch of a generative AI (GenAI)-powered assistant, Zoom Video Communications has revealed that its AI Companion has reached a milestone.

Less than two months after its introduction, more than 125,000 accounts are using Zoom AI Companion, generating more than one million meeting summaries. Zoom has also announced new capabilities and further enhancements to the existing feature set.

Effective immediately, Zoom AI Companion users will be able to use the in-meeting questions capability in seven more languages, as well as receive short meeting summary overviews at the beginning of full meeting summaries. Both AI Companion meeting summary and in-meeting questions capabilities will support a total of 32 new languages, in preview. Meeting summary overviews will be available in summaries delivered via continuous meeting chat in November 2023.

AI Companion will also provide users with meeting coach capabilities, beginning with speech analytics in Smart Recordings. Speech analytics will include the meeting host’s talk-listen ratio, talk speed and speech fillers so that hosts can gain insights into how they engage with meeting participants during Zoom Meetings.

AI Companion will be available in Zoom Events, with chat compose capabilities for lobby chats and assistance with composing emails for registration, marketing and ticketing communications. The company will introduce an optional control for customers to specify that AI Companion capabilities for their organisation only use the Zoom large language model.

AI Companion is available for eligible paid Zoom user accounts at no additional cost. Commenting on the upgrade and enhancements, Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim said: “Providing the best value to our customers across our platform is core to our mission, which is why we made its Zoom AI Companion available at no additional cost, and we continue to introduce new AI capabilities at Zoom speed, so more of our customers can get the most out of Zoom’s AI innovations. Our unique federated approach allows us to dynamically utilise different models, helping to reduce AI overhead costs and provide broad access to generative AI.”

Chris Blackstone, director of digital workplace and end user computing at Zoom customer FX payments firm Convera, added: “AI Companion’s meeting summaries and smart recordings are the first technological innovations in the last decade that bring us tangible time-saving, efficient benefits. People can prioritise specific meetings and collaborations while remaining confident they aren’t missing out on competing activities.”

Lucas Oliveira, COO of recall solution provider Bizzycar., remarked: “Zoom’s AI Companion Meeting Summary tool is helping us become better communicators. Guided by its impressively accurate output, our teams are more consistently adhering to best practices in meetings such as stating the objective upfront and clearly outlining and assigning action items. Plus, we were able to save money by offboarding a vendor and save time by not having to produce meeting notes ourselves.”