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Zoom upgrades, more artificial intelligence for professionals. Moving towards clone for video conferencing

The new generation of Zoom AI Companion is able to collect information from Zoom Workplace enabling teams to increase productivity

15 October 2024

3' min read

Technology is evolving again, including on the video calling front. And at Zoomtopia 2024, the event organised by Zoom Video Communications dedicated to the latest technological innovations for the world of work, important new features of the Zoom Workplace and Zoom Business Services platform were unveiled that are particularly useful for increasing productivity and team activities.

On the topic, Eric S. Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, emphasises the company's ambitious goal of introducing changes that can revolutionise the entire work experience: 'Our vision is to create an AI-first platform for connecting people that enables teams to perform better than ever before. With AI Companion already improving productivity, we are helping our customers transform the way they work. This is not just an evolution but a complete rethinking of the way we work in the digital age."

Prominent among the announcements at the event were Zoom AI Companion 2.0, an additional option for customising AI Companion, the artificial intelligence assistant that takes care of summarising meetings, smart recordings, composing messages and more; Zoom Tasks, which is useful for helping users move around Zoom Workplace; and, of course, several improvements for the employee and customer experience.

New AI Tools

With AI Companion 2.0, Zoom introduces a number of advanced features aimed at optimising workflows and productivity. Among the new features is the always-on interactive side panel that provides direct access to the AI assistant within Zoom Workplace, enabling smooth and seamless interaction. With expanded context, AI Companion is able to learn from user behaviour by providing relevant suggestions and responses based on conversations and what the user is looking at in the Zoom Workplace app. In addition, advanced summarisation functionality allows the assistant to gather information from across Zoom Workplace and external sources such as Microsoft Outlook, Gmail and Google Calendar to help summarise content and interactions. In addition, the web connection will allow users' questions to be answered and information to be retrieved from the web in real time for more dynamic information management, and finally, also relevant is activity tracking, i.e., the ability to detect, track and complete tasks in different workloads of the platform to help users increase productivity.

There is also a new customised add-on for AI Companion that will provide access to Google and Microsoft app, email and calendar data as well as corporate data sources to expand the knowledge base and allow customisation with corporate glossaries, offer advanced search capabilities and even act on behalf of the user by improving performance and staff development initiatives with a customised coach.

Functions to collaborate and involve

Also unveiled was Zoom Tasks, a new tool that integrates seamlessly with AI Companion to help complete a user's tasks based on interactions in the platform. As well as Zoom Phone AI-first enhancements including real-time call summaries and Zoom Phone voicemail generation so that AI Companion can generate customised voicemail messages fully automatically. Workplace users will also be able to collaborate with real-time meeting agendas and summaries to ensure the most important topics are covered, as well as access a library of pre-selected avatars in Zoom Clips to generate videos from text.

For in-person work, Zoom has launched AI Companion for in-person meetings that provides summaries and actions to be taken directly via the mobile app and Workspace Reservation to suggest days to go to the office based on colleagues' attendance, making coordination and space optimisation easier.

There is no shortage of solutions to increase employee engagement: AI Companion for Workvivo keeps staff informed and connected, and through Workvivo Employee Insights companies will be able to monitor employee well-being and performance in order to improve the working environment.

How the customer experience is changing

As part of the customer experience, Zoom has upgraded its Zoom Virtual Agent by enhancing its automated service capabilities through multi-intent detection: this tool is able to handle complex issues and automatically update customer queries, greatly improving service efficiency. In addition, an AI voice agent was introduced that brings Zoom Virtual Agent functionality to self-service phone calls.

Finally, new customised solutions for different sectors were also announced, for example: in the field of healthcare, Zoom Workplace for Healthcare will include the new version of the AI assistant with specific vocabularies and integrations with electronic medical records while, for the education sector, Zoom Workplace for Education will offer specialised tools such as lesson planning and customised feedback as well as student features such as notes generated by AI Companion, Zoom Docs and more.

These innovations, available at no extra cost to users of Zoom Workplace's paid services, mark a significant step towards an increasingly integrated and intelligent work platform. Zoom's AI-first approach not only meets the challenges of the contemporary workplace but also offers opportunities to improve operational efficiency and employee well-being.

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