Most tech companies these days are rushing to join the AI bandwagon and Zoom is no exception. Zoom has been working on their AI offerings for much of the past year now and they have several useful tools in their suite that users can enable to make their meetings more productive. We’ll cover a few of those options and how you can turn these tools on for yourself in this post.
Getting Started and How to Turn on the Tools
Zoom has dedicated a settings page for the AI tools in their suite. Users have multiple options to configure to ensure both privacy and usability. Meredith users can turn on the AI features by logging into the Zoom portal at meredith.zoom.us. Use the “Employee Sign In” button and your Meredith email sign on to log in.
Once users have reached the Zoom portal, they’ll have the option to navigate to the “Settings” area (pictured above) on their left navigation bar. After choosing “Settings,” Zoom’s AI companion will be the first item on your top navigation in the setting options.
Choices
Zoom has integrated their AI tools into several of their offerings including meeting, chat, recording and whiteboards. We’re going to primarily focus on meeting for this post but all of the options can be explored from the settings area.
Pictured above are the options I chose in setting up my meeting AI, each user will want to carefully select the options they feel most comfortable with. When choosing options simply use the slider buttons on the right to enable/disable settings. The settings above are a balance of empowering meeting attendees the ability to leverage the AI while giving the meeting host control over their meeting summaries.
What does AI Companion do?
Zoom AI Companion does two main things during a typical meeting, allows meeting attendees the ability to ask questions to the AI bot rather than the host regarding items covered already in a meeting and to provide a robust meeting summary after the meeting is concluded to whomever the has been granted access to that summary.
When choosing to enable the AI and to share access with your meeting attendees, users will have the ability to query the AI during your meeting. The AI Companion can help users get caught up without interrupting the discussion. If the meeting host has enabled the meeting questions feature, users can ask AI Companion questions about the meeting in progress, like what happened before you joined, if your name was mentioned, or if any action items have been assigned.
We know everyone has a busy schedule and when jumping from meeting to meeting it can be nice to have a “friend” to help you get your bearings. Zoom AI can be that friend.
Meeting Summary
Note-taking takes time and it divides your attention. Wouldn’t it be nice if someone, or something, else could do that for you? Zoom AI companion can. With the AI companion enabled it can be set to automatically generate a meeting summary. The AI assistant will capture all the meeting highlights and even provide a list of actions items from the meeting discussion.
Then, after the meeting is complete the summary can easily be shared to whoever you decide should get a copy. This can be done automatically, or you can manually decide who to send to on a meeting by meeting basis. This is determined in those settings we pointed to earlier.
Conclusions
I would use Zoom AI companion for the meeting summary if nothing else. Meeting hosts have a lot on their mind and having time to take notes during a meeting is usually an unwelcome distraction. AI Companion fixes that and it even helps you to remember those promises made during sessions, both good and bad, through it’s generations of action items. I think the AI chatbot would also be helpful to avoid class interruptions when people’s minds wander for a moment, or when folks come in a few minutes late.