Zoom AI Companion

Features

• Generate meeting summaries and next steps of what was discussed in meetings; share them through email and team chat.

• Review cloud recordings through highlights, smart chapters, summaries, next steps, and get analytics on key meeting and conversation factors

• Meeting coach offers feedback on your speech patterns (speaking pace, filler words, time spent listening v speaking)

• If you arrive late, catch up by asking the AI companion questions on what was missed during a meeting.

• Translate transcript into another language (available languages: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese -simplified, Russian)

• Meetings are stored in the cloud by default. Zoom does not use any meeting data to train it’s large language model.

WARNING

In the capabilities assessment of AI Companion, ITS found the following:

• Meeting summary was not always accurate. Even if it captured the words correctly, the AI missed the meaning of the conversation creating a confusing summary that needed to be edited for clarity.

• Pronouns: During the pilot, ZOOM AI misgendered people. For accurate pronouns, set them in the Zoom Profile. If you do not set pronouns, the ZOOM AI language model assumes based on your first name.

• We found ZOOM AI made other inaccurate assumptions. Always read and edit the meeting summary before sharing it publicly.

• Speaker attribution only works when all users are signed in to Zoom accounts. Using an OWL or other conference software will eliminate accurate speaker attribution.

• If you turn on the feature to “Automatically start Meeting Summary for all meetings I host”, the setting is NOT applied to meetings you scheduled before turning on that feature. This is a temporary problem that Zoom plans to fix. For meetings scheduled before the setting was activated, you must turn on Start Summary when the meeting starts.

User Instructions

To enable all the features of AI Companion, you must turn on the summary AND record the meeting. By default, all AI Companion features are OFF.

1. Open Zoom Web Portal:   Zoom web portal

2. Go to Settings -> AI Companion

You should see these default settings:

Open

3. To enable users to ask the AI questions during the meeting:

Open

4. Scroll down to Smart Recording with AI Companion: ON

5. At the beginning of each zoom meeting that you are hosting, click Start Summary 

6. To receive an audio analysis and meeting highlights, you must also record the meeting:

7. To stop AI summary: click Stop Summary. To stop the recording, return to … More and select stop recording.

When the recording and meeting summary are available, you will get an email notification:

Click on the link in the email or go to the zoom web portal

Click on Recordings, then the meeting name to see the summary and smart chapters, next steps, and the transcript. Message boards say preparing the audio transcript can take up to a few hours. Some people have reported that audio transcripts never arrive. Be aware that this product is new and can be buggy.

Access Summary and Smart Chapters or My Meeting Coach

IF YOU ARE A MAC OS USER: you will need to turn off Reactions. Start a new meeting, turn the camera on then click the green Zoom icon, then Reactions. Once you click Reactions, it will turn grey. If you leave this feature on, when you make various gestures Apple will display random emojis in your zoom meeting.

Extra meeting features

Team Chat (not the same as the chat that can occur during a meeting):

• Generate a summary of what was discussed in a long chat thread.

• Draft chat messages based on conversational context and what you want to say, as well as customize its tone.

Whiteboard:

• Generate ideas for your whiteboard as stickies, tables or mind maps.

• Refine and categorize existing content on whiteboards.

Events:

• Use AI to help compose chat messages to attendees.

• Get help writing event descriptions.

BEST PRACTICE

All AI tools are imperfect and new. Consider the tools like you would an imprecise assistant; you are ultimately responsible for how the AI tools are used and for the content they produce.

• Meeting analysis and summary is based primarily on the transcript Zoom creates. While word capture might be accurate, meaning analysis can be incorrect. We got better results when we treated the ZOOM AI companion as another participant in the meeting.

• Next steps or action items are recorded accurately when declared. For example, “Next steps include Jane’s confirmation that the integration is finished; Emma will follow up with a status report”

• For meeting video analysis, you must RECORD the meeting. Store the meetings in the cloud rather than on your computer (video takes up lots of space) The default storage in Zoom settings is the cloud. Please do not change this. (Zoom will delete recordings after 180 days.)

• Zoom is FERPA compliant. Read more.

• Provide Feedback to Zoom feature is enabled. Read more for instructions on how to leave feedback.