The video conferencing giant Zoom announced a significant upgrade to its AI Companion, promising to transform workplace productivity and collaboration. Set to launch later this month at no additional cost for paid Zoom Workplace subscribers, AI Companion 2.0 represents an interesting leap forward in AI integration across Zoom’s ecosystem and the potential of predictive, autonomous assistance.

AI Companion 2.0 boasts improved contextual awareness, allowing it to understand and respond based on external data and the content of previous conversations. This enhanced comprehension enables AI Companion to provide more relevant and timely assistance, potentially streamlining workflows and decision-making processes.

As part of the keynote at Zoomtopia 2024, CEO Eric Yuan emphasized Zoom as an “AI-first work platform for human connection.” The goal is to embed AI across its applications, enhancing AI Companion as a full digital assistant with the ability to prioritize tasks and act on a user’s behalf.

These characteristics do set AI Companion 2.0 apart from competitors. One of the most notable advancements is AI Companion’s ability to integrate with third-party applications such as Microsoft Outlook and Gmail. This integration allows for assistance with meeting summaries, transcription, and task management across Zoom platforms including meetings, phone, chat, and events.

Zoom’s federated AI stack combines the best of foundational large language models, such as Open AI, Anthropic and others, as well as developing their own proprietary language model. This approach aims to optimize quality while reducing costs, and potentially reduce the complexity of managing multiple LLMs across different applications.

Zoom is also introducing a custom add-on for AI Companion, priced at $12 per user per month, which expands access to applications for deeper customization. This offers company-specific glossaries, enhanced search capabilities, and the ability to perform actions on behalf of users. The AI Studio enables organizations to tailor for specific needs by fine-tuning models with domain-specific knowledge, creating advanced AI skills, and integrating with third-party applications like Workday and Jira to automate more complex workflows.

Enhancing Virtual Agents and Contact Center Expert Assist
Included in the suite of announcements is an upgrade to the Zoom Virtual Agent with multi-intent query handling, allowing live agents to handle more complex customer inquiries. The new enhancements emphasize AI to predict customer needs with natural, conversational engagements. Currently the VA is offered only for text interactions with voice set to be added later this year.

Also showcased was AI Expert Assist for Zoom Contact Center. This integrates knowledge base articles and CRM data to dynamically guide agents through customer interactions more effectively. By analyzing conversations, the solution understands context to provide response suggestions, as well as real-time monitoring to provide sentiment analysis and flag supervisors for instant insights.

Zoom’s continued expansion of AI offerings represents a significant opportunity to enhance productivity and streamline operations. The customization options through AI Studio and the Custom add-on present avenues for tailoring the AI experience to specific industry needs. And including AI Companion 2.0 at no additional cost removes barriers to adoption, potentially accelerates time to value, and marks a significant step in the evolution of AI-assisted workplace tools.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles