Zoomtopia 2024: Why I’m Tired of Hearing About AI (And What We Should Be Focusing On Instead)
This is the first time in a few years that I haven’t attended Zoomtopia in person. The event, typically held at the San Jose Convention Center, close to its headquarters, is one of the most fun in the industry. In 2022, the event was packed to the brim with an amazing keynote, fun fireside chats (one that even included Zoom CEO Eric Yuan interviewing the one and only Timbaland) and cool thing after cool thing after cool thing. Then, the event culminated in a “Celebration of Happiness” with a performance from Nelly. Last year’s event was a little bit dialed back but it was still cool and the updates from Zoom that aimed to push forward Zoom Workplace were exciting.
After watching yesterday’s keynote, the updates were … fine. But nearly all of them focused on AI and how heavily we should rely on Zoom’s AI Companion.
If you’ve made it this far, you probably groaned. I think I did too. We get it; AI has totally revolutionized the way we work. It’s made us more productive. I use ChatGPT for the menial tasks that don’t require a ton of my creativity these days, like drafting poll questions for our LAVNCH events or helping me comb through the data from our Monthly Temperature Check surveys. And it is wonderful and has opened up new doors and opportunities for workers around the globe but … Zoom’s entire keynote stressing the importance of relying on an AI component in October 2024 just feels redundant.
“We are giving you the power of generative AI in a very different way,” Yuan said during his presentation.
But is this a very different way?
His examples included the companion combing through your 10 scheduled meetings the day of and telling you which ones you actually need to attend. Can’t you do that yourself? And request to the team that someone just send you the notes (or the Zoom AI summary) of the meeting? Or that the meeting could just be an email?
Perhaps I’m being a curmudgeon, but I just don’t see a future in which some type of “Smart House” (that reference is for all my millennials out there) AI Companion is actually going to shave that much more time from my day than it already does. Let’s push forward and find some creative new ways in which AI can be leveraged. Or, let’s focus on the Next Big Thing. I’m already sick of talking about and hearing about Artificial Intelligence.
OK, I’ll step off my soap box now. I will say that the other thing Yuan focused on during his keynote was being mindful of people’s safety and privacy. I think in today’s day and age of cybersecurity risks all over the place, this is something that’s important for the company to focus on. I just don’t think Yuan said anything specific enough to really set any technical user’s mind at ease about the safety of the platform.
New AI innovations for Zoom Workplace to help you manage your workday and collaborate better, whether you're remote, in-office, or hybrid ✨ https://t.co/zC12gEbVoa
— Zoom (@Zoom) October 9, 2024
✅ Zoom Tasks, an AI-first solution that will help you detect, recommend, and complete tasks
💡 Meeting Agendas… pic.twitter.com/xHbn944nhj
Finally, here were the updates I found most interesting:
- AI Companion 2.0 is available this month at no additional cost for paid plans. AI Companion 2.0 will be available across Zoom Workplace via a side panel to “help users stay up-to-date on important conversations, synthesize information to make faster, more informed decisions, and take action.”
- Ability to customize AI Companion 2.0 with custom add-ons and integrations with different apps.
- Zoom Tasks: Enable your AI assistant to detect and recommend tasks from meeting summaries, emails, docs, whiteboards and more. AI Companion will also be able to help you complete those tasks, and you can edit and manage them all from a centralized Tasks tab in the Zoom Workplace app.
- AI Companion will soon be able to help build smart meeting agendas. It will be able to pull in recommended content, add section timers to remind you to keep meetings on track, and make it easy to share the summary and action items afterward.
I guess my final point is that I just expected Zoom to do something more exciting or push the boundary a little more this year. It was already disappointing that the company is dialing its in-person version of the event back. But don’t get me wrong. I love Zoom and will still use it, of course. I’m just not particularly impressed by the updates.
Check out the full list of updates here. Did you attend the keynote? What did you think?