Starting Monday, Zoom users will be able to open a documents tool from within the video calling app and create shareable files based on their meetings, but they’ll be prompted to create and edit them using generative AI. Essentially a Zoom version of Docs, the new feature is the company’s latest effort to compete with Microsoft and Google to make the workplace more ubiquitous for enterprises.
The document introduces Zoom’s AI companion, an LLM model generation tool based on OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the company’s own model that was announced last fall. It can take meeting notes and organize them into templates, or create tables, checklists, and trackers to organize processes and tasks. The documents can then be integrated into Zoom meetings for sharing and editing.
“AI is going to be a really differentiating experience,” says Smita Hashim, Zoom’s chief product officer. “The goal is to enable AI to do the mundane, high-friction tasks that take up a lot of our time.”
Zoom Docs is the latest update to the company’s collaboration tool Workplace, which was released in March, and is an attempt to attract customers in a crowded market dominated by Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, which are already adding their own AI capabilities to their tools and laptops.
Competing in this market is “incredibly difficult,” says Will McKeon White, senior infrastructure and operations analyst at research firm Forrester, but it’s not impossible: Google Docs has thrived in a world once dominated by Microsoft Word. Google Workspace has more than 3 billion users, and Microsoft Teams has more than 320 million monthly active users.
Zoom is betting that price will matter here: its Workplace plans include its AI Companion at no extra cost. (Zoom Workplace costs $14 to $19 per user per month for small businesses; Microsoft’s Copilot for 365 add-on costs $30 per user per month, and Google’s Gemini for business costs $20 to $30 per user per month on top of the base price for the service.)
Gemini also helps you brainstorm, create images, summarize and revise text in Google Docs, while CoPilot works across Word, PowerPoint and Excel to analyze information, rewrite information and create presentations.
Convincing companies to move from one workplace technology provider to another is tough, and Zoom may be betting on the fact that many organizations already use Zoom in tandem with another provider and are ready to switch. Zoom has been looking for the next big thing that could replicate the rapid growth it saw during COVID-19 lockdowns, as people used Zoom to work and attend Zoom weddings. In early 2023, the company hit a tipping point: More clients were already willing to pay for Zoom, and fewer were using it for “fun” Zoom calls with family and friends.
The company was dropped from the Nasdaq 100 index at the end of 2023, and its shares have fallen nearly 90% from their 2020 peak. Zoom laid off about 15% of its employees in early 2023, but seemed to recognize the need to expand, integrating more calendar features and beginning to add cartoon avatars. Zoom has also seen growth in contact centers, a customer service channel for businesses, recently. But it needs to do more to compete with bundled services from the likes of Google and Microsoft that also offer video calling.
