What you need to know about using Zooms new AI assistant
With its new update, Zoom includes its own AI assistant, Zoom AI Companion, which is available at no additional cost alongside the other paid services.
In today’s work environment, AI has become an essential tool for efficient and collaborative productivity. That’s according to a global study by consulting firm Morning Consult for Zoom Video Communications, according to which more than 75% of teams using AI report that collaborators complete tasks faster and produce higher-quality work.
With this in mind, Zoom is introducing Zoom AI Companion, its generative AI assistant that can help revolutionize the way we work and communicate. Mahesh Ram, head of AI products at Zoom explains that the service “is designed to integrate seamlessly with the program’s collaborative tools, offering a range of capabilities that can help you work smarter and more intuitively.”
Fernando Riedel, Voice and Collaboration Specialist at Cirion Technologies explains that one of the remarkable aspects of the service is that Zoom AI Companion has been included at no additional cost in paid licenses for a few months now. “Many of our customers at Cirion Technologies already have Zoom licenses and use it to communicate and collaborate, so this is the best time to try out the new service.”
Follow us on: 
To get started with the assistant, Cirion provides a comprehensive guide for users to learn how to activate AI Companion and explore its key features in a simple way by applying some tips and tricks to get the most out of the Zoom assistant.
Zoom AI Companion Utilities
One of the advantages of the AI Companion is that it comes natively integrated with Zoom tools. Like the rest of the platform, the wizard is designed to be simple and easy to use.
Here are the three most practical options that help with day-to-day tasks:
1.- Writing messages: According to the Morning Consult survey, people spend most of their time composing and sending emails and chat messages. 44% of them admitted that they spend more time than they would like on these tasks. As a writing assistant, Zoom AI Companion can compose texts for email and chat messages with the right tone and length. Therefore, it streamlines communications in the workspace and reduces the time needed to coordinate a professional team.
2.- Summarize information to stay up to date: Another useful feature of the assistant is the ability to quickly summarize Zoom chat threads, so a person can catch up on what was said in a long chat chain in less time so they can integrate and respond appropriately. AI Companion can also provide meeting summaries, without the need to take notes or record the meeting. This way, the team can concentrate on the meeting itself while the attendee summarizes its content in a format that is accessible to its members.
“Coming soon, AI Companion will also be able to analyze recorded phone calls, as well as generate summaries of SMS messages and voice messages on Zoom Phone. It is also under development that the assistant can provide real-time feedback on the user’s communication and presentation skills during meetings, so that they can improve in the moment,” says Fernando Riedel.
3.- Automate note-taking in meetings: The attendee can be scheduled to automatically start each meeting in their web portal settings under the AI Companion tab. On the other hand, in meetings for which you don’t want a summary, such as one-on-one calls or where sensitive information is discussed, you can edit recurring meetings and choose to automatically start only the meeting summary in one call type. Such as weekly team meetings. Like the automatic summary, they can be edited from the web portal; under “Options” and then ticking the appropriate box.
Activate Zoom AI Companion
All users with a paid account with Zoom have access to the AI Companion. To be able to activate it, you have to follow the steps below:
1.- Log in and update the Zoom client: The first thing to check is that Zoom is updated to the version that includes the wizard (a minimum version of 5.16.0 is required), and that you are logged in with the paid features.
2.- Check with the account administrator: All AI Companion features are disabled by default. That’s why admins should first enable the features through account- and group-level settings. From a Zoom meeting, if you view the Zoom AI Plugin (the AI Companion icon should be at the top), click on it and show the instructions to ask the admin to enable that feature.
3.- Activate the functions from the web portal: Clicking on “Settings” on the left panel of the web portal brings up the “AI Companion” tab. From there, you can activate, deactivate, and schedule each feature you have access to as a user.
4.- Ready to use: The AI Companion icon appears in several products within the Zoom client. Such as in the Zoom Meetings controls toolbar or in the Zoom Team Chat window. Once you locate the AI Companion icon, you’re ready to employ its capabilities as a writing assistant, for AI meetings, and more.
The Managed Zoom service, which mainly involves Meeting, Phone and Rooms, now adds Zoom AI Companion and is available from Cirion Technologies’ Voice & Collaboration .
Fernando Riedel, points out that “if companies are ready to improve their productivity and collaboration, a very good alternative is to incorporate the use of AI Companion now, all at no additional cost with the paid services assigned to their Zoom user account. You can migrate to this platform through Cirion quickly, cheaply and effectively,” concludes the expert.