Zoom CEO Eric Yuan recently outlined a bold vision for the future, where AI-powered digital avatars attend ‘boring’ meetings on behalf of employees.
In an interview with The Verge, Yuan said Zoom aims to transcend its identity as merely a videoconferencing business by leveraging artificial intelligence.
He introduced the concept of ‘digital twins,’ which he believes can help shorten the workweek.
Mr Yuan said: “Why do we need to work five days a week? Down the road, four days or three days.”
He explained employees wouldn’t have to endure multiple Zoom calls daily, as AI could handle such tasks.
He said: “You do not need to spend so much time [in meetings].
“You do not have to have five or six Zoom calls every day. You can leverage the AI to do that.”
Zoom has embarked on what Yuan calls the 2.0 journey, with the new slogan “Work Happy with the Zoom AI Companion.”
“You do not have to have five or six Zoom calls every day. You can leverage the AI to do that.”
He said: “Looking back at 1.0, it was more about building some applications; videoconferencing is one of them.
“Our slogan was “Work Happy.”
“Right now, [when] you look at a 2.0, it is different.
“It’s “Work Happy with the Zoom AI Companion” and everything really about Workplace, the entire collaboration platform as well as AI.”
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Yuan elaborated AI’s role would extend beyond calls to other work activities like chat, messaging, emails, phone calls, whiteboarding, coding, creative tasks, managerial duties, and project management.
This comprehensive integration of AI into workplace tasks is central to Zoom’s 2.0 strategy.
Yuan said: “Zoom is more than just a videoconferencing too.”
He emphasized the company has developed a suite of new capabilities within the Workplace platform.
“But if you look at just videoconferencing itself, I think we can leverage AI more and more. You do not need to spend so much time [in meetings].
“You do not have to have five or six Zoom calls every day. You can leverage the AI to do that.”
