Starting Monday, Zoom users will have the option to open a document tool from within their video calling app and create sharable files based on their meetings—but they’ll also be prompted to use generative AI to help them write and edit them. This new feature, essentially Zoom’s version of docs, is the latest effort to compete with Microsoft and Google to become an everything workplace for businesses.
The docs feature Zoom’s AI Companion, a generative tool built on LLM models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the company’s own models, unveiled last fall. It can take a meeting transcript and organize it into templates, or make tables, checklists, and trackers to organize processes and tasks. The docs can then be integrated to Zoom meetings for sharing and editing.
“AI is what makes the experience so differentiated,” says Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom. “The goal is that the mundane, high friction takes, which take up so much of our time, can be done by AI.”
Zoom docs are the company’s latest update to its collaborative tool Workplace that came out in March. It’s an attempt to attract customers in a crowded market: Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 dominate the space, and have already added their own AI features to tools and to their laptops.
The market is “extremely difficult to compete in,” says Will McKeon-White, senior analyst of infrastructure and operations at research firm Forrester, but not impossible—Google Docs has thrived in a world where Microsoft Word once reigned. Google Workspace has more than 3 billion users, while Microsoft Teams has over 320 million monthly active users.
In this case, Zoom is betting that the price will matter: its Workplace plans include the company’s AI Companion at no extra cost (Zoom Workplace costs between $14 and $19 dollars per user per month for smaller companies. Microsoft’s Copilot for 365 add-on costs $30 per user per month, and Gemini for business from Google costs between $20 and $30 per user per month in addition to base costs for the service).
Gemini can also help users brainstorm in Google Docs, create images, and summarize and refine text. And CoPilot can work across Word, PowerPoint, and Excel to analyze information, rewrite information, and create presentations.
Persuading businesses to move from one workplace tech provider to another is challenging, and Zoom may be banking on the fact that many organizations already use Zoom alongside another provider, leaving them open to a switch. Zoom has been looking for the next big thing that could replicate its rapid growth during the Covid-19 lockdowns, as people worked via Zoom or even attended Zoom weddings. In early 2023, the company hit a tipping point—the number of clients that were willing to pay for Zoom had already done so, and fewer people were turning to it for “fun” Zoom calls with family or friends.
The company dropped off the Nasdaq 100 at the end of 2023, and its share price is down nearly 90 percent from its 2020 high. Zoom laid off about 15 percent of its staff in early 2023, but seemingly aware it needed to expand, began integrating more calendar features and added cartoon avatars. Zoom has recently also seen growth in its Contact Center, a customer service channel for businesses. But to compete with bundled services like Google and Microsoft that also offer video calls, it needs to do more.
Under pressure to evolve after its pandemic hype, Zoom has made a full push to integrate AI into its platform. In April Zoom announced its Workplace collaboration tools, which include an AI assistant that summarizes meetings and chats and can also write messages and emails. Zoom also expanded its workflow automation tool in July, which sends automated and recurring reminders tied to meetings and regularly scheduled tasks, like summary notes and project updates.
But the end goal of Zoom is bigger: In June Eric S. Yuan, CEO and founder of Zoom, painted a vision of the future to The Verge where AI-driven digital twins stand in for people during meetings and read and respond to emails. Yuan’s future of work is one where we work less, thanks to AI. (Yuan did not specify whether Zoom is currently working on digital twins.)
For now, one of the biggest challenges for workplace tech to solve is the chaotic nature of notifications; from emails, chats, phone calls, and various places to store documents, workers are overwhelmed and wasting time digging data up. This is where AI could help, and that’s easier done if that information lives within one company’s software, McKeon-White says.
Zoom’s growing platform has “good potential,” says Adam Holtby, a principal analyst of workplace transformation for research firm Omdia says, particularly among frontline workers who have not traditionally been targeted by Google or Microsoft and are not tied to desks, who are ripe for digital disruption and need tech solutions.
But making transformative changes in AI at work will take huge investment in capital and employee training. Companies want to be on the forefront of AI, but some leaders have provided little guidance to workers. The impact of that investment may not be clear until later this decade.
Zoom needs to “continue in broadening out its AI capabilities,” says Holtby, to show that their tools should be prioritized and are worth the investment. Amid the AI hype cycle, normalizing AI use among a broad swath of workers will still take time.
Source : Wired
