To remain competitive in the saturated videoconferencing market, Zoom is rebranding several of its AI-powered features, including the generative AI assistant previously known as Zoom IQ. This announcement follows recent backlash over changes to Zoom's terms of service, which suggested that the company could use customer videos to train its AI systems. In response to this criticism, Zoom updated its policy to clarify that "communications-like" customer data will not be used for training AI applications or services, either for Zoom or third-party partners.
The Software Freedom Conservancy, a nonprofit organization supporting open source projects, has urged developers to abandon Zoom due to these service changes. In a press release, Zoom emphasized its commitment to AI-driven innovation that enhances user experience while prioritizing trust, privacy, and safety. The company reassured users that it does not utilize any customer audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications-like content, such as poll results or whiteboards, to train its AI models.
Zoom AI Companion
The rebranded version of Zoom IQ, now called the AI Companion, leverages a combination of Zoom’s proprietary generative AI and models from partners like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic. This tool is expanding into more areas of the Zoom ecosystem, including Zoom Whiteboard, Zoom Team Chat, and Zoom Mail.
One of the most significant enhancements is the upcoming conversational interface, set to launch in spring 2024. This will allow users to interact directly with the AI Companion, asking questions about past meetings and chats, and executing various tasks. For instance, users can inquire about project statuses, utilizing transcribed meetings, chats, whiteboards, emails, documents, and even third-party applications. The AI Companion will enable users to ask questions during meetings to catch up on key points, generate support tickets, and compose responses. Moreover, it can summarize meetings, pinpointing action items and suggesting next steps.
In spring 2024, the AI Companion will also provide real-time feedback on meeting attendance and offer coaching on conversational and presentation skills. While not all users may welcome this feature—especially those wary of AI’s potential implications—Zoom reassures that real-time feedback and other functionalities can be deactivated by account owners or administrators at any time.
In Zoom Team Chat, users will soon (within weeks) gain a feature for summarizing chat threads through the AI Companion, a functionality that was also available in Zoom IQ. By early 2024, users will be able to enjoy features like auto-completing chat sentences and scheduling meetings directly from chat conversations.
Another anticipated feature for Zoom Whiteboard, launching in spring 2024, allows the AI Companion to generate images and populate templates. While details are sparse on which image-generating model will be employed, it’s likely to align with advanced text-to-image tools such as OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 and Midjourney. Additionally, users of Zoom Mail will receive AI-generated email suggestions starting in early fall, with a feature set to be introduced by spring 2024 that will allow users to add meeting summaries to the Notes app and summarize text threads and calls from Zoom's VoIP service, Zoom Phone.
Many of these AI Companion features will be incorporated into the side panel of the Zoom app; however, they will be accessible only to paying customers once they roll out.
Zoom Revenue Accelerator
Along with the rebranding of Zoom IQ for Sales, now known as Zoom Revenue Accelerator, this tool aims to improve its reception following a lackluster launch marked by criticism of its sentiment analysis features. Numerous rights organizations previously urged Zoom to abandon its efforts in this area, deeming the technology unreliable and under-tested.
Instead of discontinuation, Zoom has pivoted the tool's functionalities toward more practical applications. The platform is set to introduce new capabilities, including a "virtual coach" that simulates conversations for onboarding and training sales representatives. This feature evaluates sales performance using various methodologies akin to other AI-driven sales training solutions available today.
Additionally, Revenue Accelerator will introduce deal risk signals, activating alerts if a deal stalls for an extended period. Another forthcoming feature, Discover Monthly, will keep track of competitor mentions during calls and summarize such trends on a monthly basis.
These revamps arrive at a crucial time for Zoom, which reported its first quarterly loss of $108 million since 2018 in the fourth quarter of its 2023 financial year. In February, the company laid off approximately 1,300 employees, accounting for 15% of its workforce, citing a post-pandemic demand slump and intensified competition from rivals like Microsoft, Cisco, Webex, and Slack. Despite the challenges, Zoom's outlook brightened slightly for the quarter ending in April, as the company implemented cost-cutting measures. While recording the slowest growth rate ever at 3% and a decline in online revenue, Zoom raised its annual revenue forecast to between $4.47 billion and $4.49 billion, reflecting a slight increase from previous estimates.
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