Zoom introduces AI avatars and launches its own AI-powered office suite

Zoom announced a series of new artificial intelligence tools, including photorealistic AI avatars for meetings, its own AI-powered office apps, and a platform for creating custom AI agents without coding.

The updates also include deepfake detection for meetings, a voice translator, and an expanded version of Zoom’s AI Companion assistant across its products.

AI avatars that can attend meetings for you

The most unusual feature in the announcement is the introduction of AI avatars capable of representing users in meetings.

These avatars are designed as digital twins that mimic a person’s appearance and facial movements, including lip and eye motion. According to Zoom, they can respond to questions during meetings and represent users when they are unable to join live. The company says the avatars will be useful in situations when someone cannot turn on their camera or attend a meeting in person. The feature will work both in real-time video meetings and in Zoom’s asynchronous video messaging tools.

Zoom first demonstrated the technology last year, but it is now expected to become available to users later this month.

Deepfake detection for meetings

Alongside the avatars, Zoom is also introducing deepfake detection technology designed to warn participants if the platform suspects that audio or video has been artificially manipulated.

The system is meant to help organizations identify potential impersonation attempts during calls, a growing concern as generative AI tools make it easier to create convincing digital replicas of people.

Zoom launches its own AI office apps

Zoom is also moving into territory traditionally dominated by Google and Microsoft by introducing a set of AI-powered office applications.

The new tools include:

• AI Docs for generating documents
• AI Slides for creating presentations
• AI Sheets for working with structured data and spreadsheets

The applications rely on Zoom’s AI systems and can generate drafts of documents, presentations, or tables using information from meeting transcripts and other connected services. The company says the new office suite will initially launch as a preview later this spring.

AI Companion expands across Zoom’s ecosystem

Zoom is also expanding its AI Companion, the assistant that summarizes meetings, extracts key information, and helps automate routine work.

The latest version, AI Companion 3.0, will now appear directly inside the desktop application. Previously it was available mainly through the web interface.

The assistant is also expanding into other products in the company’s ecosystem, including the employee communications platform Workvivo. In addition, the AI Companion can connect to a range of enterprise services such as Slack, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Gmail, Outlook, Asana, and Jira, allowing users to ask questions across multiple company knowledge bases.

The assistant can also handle administrative tasks like sending follow-up messages after meetings or adding customer information to Salesforce.