Zoom is Launching Its Own AI-Powered Google Docs Competitor

An anonymous reader shared this report from Gizmodo: Zoom is setting out to compete with Google and Microsoft by introducing Zoom Docs at its annual Zoomtopia 2023 event on Tuesday. Zoom Docs is the company's own version of an AI-powered workspace that will provide users with AI capabilities to draft, edit, summarize, and include information from meeting discussions.

The company said in a press release that its new feature will be integrated into the meetings feature, and says it will make it "easy for teams and individuals to create, collaborate, manage projects, and stay organized." It will also reportedly include the option to include tables, charts, and images in the Zoom Doc function, according to the press release...
Zoom's press release calls it "a next-gen way of collaborating, built from the ground up with AI at its core," with "traditional document capabilities, as well as wikis and drag-and-drop content blocks for tables, charts, and images" Zoom Docs users can also leverage its AI-powered functionality to populate docs with content from Zoom Meetings to inform and jumpstart creation, generate content with Zoom AI Companion, summarize content quickly, easily search documents, and more. Zoom Docs is scheduled to be generally available in 2024.
Gizmodo notes that in March Microsoft added ChatGPT to its Suite 365 business software, and Google announced it was adding generative AI to Google Docs and Google Excel.

Grasping all the straws?

[mtmra70]

Cisco released meeting summaries and actions items for meetings many, many years ago. For some reason just Microsoft and Zoom seem to get all the press in the collab space. Meanwhile, Cisco is leading the charge - this was even admitted to me by Zoom.

I think Zoom is just grasping at the straws to try and keep customers, as well as justify the price for their more expensive plans.

And before anyone starts ripping on Webex, make sure you have used the Webex with the advanced noise reduction, Slido integration,

Re:

[ItsJustAPseudonym]

...that all works amazingly well with their proper Room series video units running SpeakerTrack and People Focus.

I'm guessing those are all Cisco hardware? That would mean the user's existing (non-Cisco) hardware would have to be replaced with that hardware to get those benefits.

Okay, that's a good datapoint, but suspect that's an expensive choice. In a similar situation, when my company had to upgrade/replace conference room hardware four years ago, they were already mainly using Skype. Microsoft dro

Re:

[mtmra70]

Actually, Cisco hardware works fine with Zoom, Teams, etc. Either via SIP or BYOD USB. Cisco devices are now able to run in MTR mode too if you want.

Even better, almost all advanced features work on any meeting platform due to it running local on the device. The same cannot be said for Zoom Rooms which in almost all cases is only available in Zoom Meetings.

And the final icing on the cake, Cisco solutions are almost always more simplified, cheaper and function in a better capacity than anything coming from

Re: Grasping all the straws?

[sixminuteabs]

Cisco never realized most work gets done when you are not in a meeting or on a phone call.

Maybe actuallly useful AI

[nicolaiplum]

This sounds like actually useful AI - maybe.

The AI chatbots that make up random stuff when they don't know the answer, like some bullshitter down the pub or a verbally incontinent politician, are not useful. Unless you are interested in randomly fabricated lies mixed with truth, which almost no-one is, they are pointless. Even propagandists, marketers, etc, want some chosen lies mixed with the truth. There's no point in having propaganda about your Glorious Leader that randomly adds untrue good things and u

creeping featuritis

[Mozai]

We use Zoom every day at work, to keep our WFH team together. It works because we don't have constant monitoring and metrics, it's just there if we need it. Adding constant monitoring and metrics means we must second-guess anything we say now, which means we communicate less. Furthermore: these new features are added to the toolbar to increase customer engagement, but that shoves off the toolbar the features WE ACTUALLY USE, which ironically decreases our engagement with the product.

Scripting better be good

[HalAtWork]

Hopefully scripting will be robust. This is a weak point for Google. Yes the language they use is well known, but the hooks into the application are not, and there is a lot of functionality that is lacking. Many things must be done with inelegant hacks and workarounds, which makes it difficult to collaborate on code when everyone has their own methods of implementing workarounds.

This is one area where MS Office and even LibreOffice are far superior.

Uhh

[paul_engr]

Google excel? Hmm

In other words

[BloomFilter]

Microsoft Teams is eating our lunch, so we need to do something to appear remotely relevant to business users.