Zoom’s AI Companion: Revolutionizing Meeting Notes and Tone Analysis for More Efficient Workflows

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Leverage Zoom's Artificial Intelligence Assistant for Note-taking and Meeting Summaries

The incessant typing you hear in the background of a Zoom meeting, akin to the noise of overactive chipmunks, can be quite distracting. Often, individuals aren't aware of the disturbance caused by their rapid typing. Nevertheless, recording key points and tasks during these calls is essential.

The individual in question isn't necessarily a person. Launched in the previous autumn, Zoom's latest addition, the AI Companion feature, which comes with every premium Zoom plan, essentially acts as a virtual administrative aide during calls. This digital assistant is capable of providing meeting summaries, generating tasks, and identifying the most vocal participant.

The AI Companion draws on advanced language models provided by OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta, and has enhanced its capabilities by observing numerous internal discussions among Zoom staff members, states Smita Hashim, who holds the position of chief product officer at Zoom. ("To ensure privacy, we strictly avoid incorporating actual customer dialogues into our training processes," she mentions.)

The capabilities of AI Companion are significant, yet it's not immediately clear how to utilize it effectively during calls or in what ways it streamlines your tasks. To understand its functionalities better, I conducted numerous meetings and subjected Zoom's AI assistant to various experiments. I will guide you through achieving similar outcomes, starting with the most effective prompts. Additionally, I will discuss the limitations of the AI Companion as of now.

Meeting Summary Process

In the course of a meeting, the AI Companion feature can be activated by selecting the icon situated beneath the primary video display, identifiable by its magic wand and sparkle appearance. Zoom includes several default suggestions to assist users in initiating the process, including the option to “Summarize the meeting.” This feature generates detailed bullet points reflecting the conversation's content up to that point. The AI Companion functions similarly to a personal assistant in meetings, capable of producing a visual representation of the discussion by creating a whiteboard filled with ideas derived from the ongoing dialogue.

During my evaluations, it became apparent that the functionality excels when participants are precise and deliberate on their Zoom calls. Adhering to a pre-established agenda and concisely addressing key issues leads to highly effective summaries. In a specific instance discussing a new website design, the summary effectively highlighted discussions on design development, prototype creation, and testing phases. Yet, the AI Companion didn't consistently capture discussions accurately. For example, in a session planning a family trip abroad, the dialogue was too scattered, resulting in a nonsensical AI-generated summary. It seems like these bots are schooling us on how to adapt to their domain, doesn’t it? The AI Companion yields the best results when meetings are organized and follow a clear structure.

Rather than requesting a brief overview, you have the option to prompt the AI Assistant with phrases such as "Catch me up" or inquire if there are any "action items" that need to be addressed. The assistant won't provide a detailed summary of the entire meeting but will highlight a handful of key points and conclusions. For instance, during a discussion regarding holiday plans, the assistant informed me that my daughter Rachel had recently mentioned airline tickets. Utilizing the catch-up feature proves to be incredibly useful for moments when your attention drifts off during a meeting, not that we ever find ourselves doing that during Zoom calls, obviously.

The AI Assistant will be accessible in the Zoom sidebar, enabling you to inquire about any aspect of the ongoing meeting.

Discussing the Feature on Tone Analysis

A standout feature of the AI Companion is its ability to analyze tone. Contrary to what one might expect from an AI assistant, presumed to possess a limited capacity for emotional perception, the Zoom bot demonstrates a commendable proficiency in assessing the atmosphere of meetings. Within the AI Companion, posing a query such as, "What was the overall mood of the meeting?" yields a concise summary. This function proves invaluable in a professional context, whether it's navigating a dispute with a colleague or gauging a client's interest level during a sales discussion.

During my trial, the AI Companion detected a bit of strain in a family discussion about the holiday I brought up. I had a chance to see the product in action with Smita Hashim from Zoom, and the AI Companion observed that the mood was mostly upbeat. The bot picked up on Hashim's optimistic and encouraging manner of speaking. Additionally, it was interesting to test out inquiries such as "Did anyone get mad during the meeting?"

Which Participant Spoke the Most?

Another aspect that caught my attention was the ability to assess who dominated the conversation in a meeting. In a test discussion focused on web design, surprisingly, I discovered that I was the one who spoke the most. This insight was valuable as it made me aware that I should engage others by asking more questions and enhancing my listening skills.

It came as a shock to learn that it's not possible to directly inquire from the bot about the duration each participant spoke for. However, you can produce a written record from an audio or video capture, which easily shows who had the most speaking time. Additionally, there's a feature that allows for the creation of short, shareable clips from a meeting, enabling viewers to focus on particular parts of the discussion.

Limitations of the AI Bot

The capabilities of artificial intelligence often appear almost magical, yet there are certain limitations when it comes to the AI Companion. For instance, while it's possible to use an AI avatar to substitute your own image in video feeds, these avatars cannot take actions on your behalf or attend meetings in your place. I experimented with the idea of having an avatar introduce me by using a prompt such as "Introduce me to everyone," but it was unsuccessful. Essentially, these avatars function more as decorative images rather than interactive bots that could free up your schedule, enabling you to enjoy more leisure activities like golf without having to attend meetings.

Zoom boasts robust messaging and file-sharing capabilities, yet I found it unexpected that its AI Companion lacks the ability to organize Zoom meetings for multiple participants by determining the most suitable time according to their schedules. However, this functionality seems to be on the horizon. Within its Team Chat feature, akin to a Slack channel, starting meetings is as simple as a single click.

Finally, there's good news for those concerned about privacy: The AI Companion feature doesn't automatically activate. Instead, it requires the host to manually turn it on, and in workplace settings, your IT team might entirely block its use. This means the bot is designed to assist and interact only when users explicitly choose to engage with it.

In essence, the AI Companion was a significant time-saver: It eliminated the need for manual note-taking during my meetings and provided valuable summaries afterward, all without the distraction of typing sounds.

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