Video conferencing platform Zoom plans to expand its smart companion, Zoom IQ, and will work with OpenAI to bolster a more flexible approach to AI, it said Monday.

In addition to adding new features in Zoom IQ, Zoom said it will take a federated approach to AI. This approach means deploying a combination of AI models: those it has developed in house, those developed by leading AI companies such as Open AI, or, for select customers, their own models.

This approach will allow the company to make "generative AI a driving force in making our customers' organizations more productive," Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom, said in a blog post.

By having the flexibility to incorporate multiple types of models, Zoom will be able to provide "the most value for our customers' diverse needs," she added.

The models are also customizable, so they can be tuned to a given company's vocabulary and scenarios for better performance, Hashim said.

The news comes a month after Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said that "the age of AI and large language models has arrived" and said that Zoom would be looking into ways it could benefit its customers by deploying this technology.

Generative AI comes to Zoom IQ

In addition to the new partnership with OpenAI, Zoom also announced it was adding additional generative AI capabilities to Zoom IQ. The tool already provides customers with access to smart meeting recordings, while Zoom IQ for Sales -launched in April 2022 -already uses AI to capture insights from customer interactions to help boost sales performances.

Today's expansion adds three additional capabilities to the tool: Chat Compose, Email Compose, and Meeting Summary.

Zoom IQ Chat Compose helps users to compose messages based on the conversational context of their chat, and can be customized to change the tone of the message and response suggestions.

Similarly, Zoom IQ Email Compose takes the conversational context from prior Zoom Meetings, Zoom Phone calls, and email threads to draft email suggestions. This feature will initially be available in Zoom IQ for Sales.

Zoom IQ Meeting Summary generates summaries of meetings and captures the post-meeting next steps that users can share directly via a team chat, a Zoom Calendar invite or in an email.

Zoom also announced some other additions to its platform.

Customers will soon have access to the beta version of Intelligent Director, a capability available within Zoom Rooms that will determine the best angle of the individuals in the room to display within the meeting.

Finally, Zoom Scheduler integrates with Google Calendar and Microsoft 365 to share meeting participants' availability with others to make finding a convenient meetings time easier, while Zoom Spots, which has been renamed Zoom Huddles, is now available globally for customers to request early access.