Zoom could introduce AI avatars that would attend meetings on behalf of users, CEO Eric Yuan said in a recent interview. This would supposedly allow users of the video conferencing platform to focus more on personal interactions, and perhaps have a four-day work week. Yuan also discussed the future of Zoom, stressing that it is not just a video conferencing platform, aiming to take on giants like Microsoft and Google in the business software industry.
Zoom AI Avatars on Zoom
Speaking to The Verge’s Nilay Patel, the CEO highlighted Zoom’s investment in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, specifically AI avatars. When it comes to video conferencing, Yuan said people don’t need to spend time in five to six meetings every day. Instead, “You can use AI to do it.”
So AI avatars, along with platform phone, chat, messaging and project management tools, can bring people closer to the four-day work week. “That’s the direction. It is part of our workplace (platform). It is our 2.0 journey,” added Yuan.
According to the CEO, this could be possible when everyone has their own Large Language Model (LLM) to serve as the foundation of an AI-powered digital twin. “We will all have our LLM. In essence, it is the foundation for a digital twin. Then I can count on my digital twin. Sometimes I want to join, so I do. If I don’t want to join, I can send a digital twin to join. That’s the future.”
Having personal LLMs can also help an AI avatar be better at certain things than the user themselves by tweaking parameters. Giving an example of how he attends sales-related meetings but was not good at it, Yuan said: “For that meeting, I say, ‘Hey, adjust that parameter to have better negotiation skills, send that version and join.'”
Speaking about the technology needed to fulfill the vision of AI avatars, Yuan said that AI, along with augmented reality (AR), “will help us achieve this.” However, he also emphasized that the technologies are not there yet.
