Zoom is one step closer to letting AI avatars join meetings for you. As part of a broader AI expansion, Zoom announced that you will soon be able to create an AI avatar of yourself that you can use to send short messages to your team.
To create a digital avatar, you'll need to record an initial video of yourself, which will use Zoom's AI to create an avatar that looks like you – and even sounds like you. From there, you can write the message you want your AI avatar to say and then have it speak for you. This feature only works with Zoom's Clips feature, allowing you to record short video updates for your colleagues.
Zoom takes into account the possibility of deepfakes. Smita Hashim, Zoom's chief product officer, said during a press conference that the company is “very careful with advanced authentication, watermarking technology and strict usage policies.”
The custom AI avatars will launch early next year as part of Zoom's custom AI Companion add-on, which will cost an additional $12 per month. If you don't have the add-on but have a paid Zoom subscription, Zoom still lets you create clips with preset AI avatars and voices, which are probably just as creepy as making AI avatars of yourself.
During an interview on decoder In June, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan mentioned his goal of allowing you to send a “digital twin” to meetings and calls while you do something else. “Ideally, I don’t have to attend this meeting today. I can send a digital version of myself to join in so I can go to the beach,” Yuan said. “Or I don’t have to check my email; The digital version of me can read most emails… Like [do we] Using AI, how do we use Zoom Workplace to fully automate this type of work? This is something that is very important to us.”
Along with AI Avatars, Zoom's new custom add-on enables integration of its AI with additional third-party productivity apps like Zendesk and Asana, and introduces new personalization options that let you create custom meeting summary templates.