To stay competitive in the crowded market for videoconferencing, Zoom is updating and rebranding several of its AI-powered features, including the generative AI assistant formerly known as Zoom IQ.
The news comes after controversy over changes to Zoom’s terms of service, which implied that Zoom reserved the right to use customers’ videos to train its AI tools and models. In response to the blowback, Zoom updated its policy to explicitly state that “communications-like” customer data won’t be used in training AI apps and services for Zoom or its outside partners.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, the nonprofit that serves support and legal services for open source projects, recently called on developers to ditch Zoom over the terms of service changes.
“Zoom’s goal is to invest in AI-driven innovation that enhances user experience and productivity while prioritizing trust, safety and privacy,” Zoom wrote in a press release shared with TechCrunch. “In August, Zoom shared that it doesn’t use any customer audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments or other communications-like
customer content (such as poll results, whiteboards or reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party AI models.”The rebranded Zoom IQ, called the AI Companion, is powered by the same mix of technologies as Zoom IQ: Zoom’s in-house generative AI along with AI models from vendors including Meta, OpenAI and Anthropic. But its reach is expanding to more corners of the Zoom ecosystem, including Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Team Chat and Zoom Mail.
Perhaps the biggest news is that Zoom is gaining what’s essentially a ChatGPT-like bot via the AI Companion. In spring 2024, Zoom will get a conversational interface that’ll allow users to chat directly with the AI Companion, and ask questions about prior meetings and chats as well as take actions on their behalves.
For example, users will be able to query the AI Companion for the status of projects, pulling on transcribed meetings, chats, whiteboards, emails, documents and even third-party apps. They’ll be able to ask the AI Companion questions during a meeting to catch up on key points, create and file support tickets and draft responses to inquiries. And — as was possible with Zoom IQ — they’ll be able to have the AI Companion summarize meetings, automatically identifying action items and surfacing the next steps.
