Zoom wants to make your Team Chats even smarter - using AI, of course

• Zoom Team Chat is now smarter with AI Companion integration
• The AI upgrades are free of charge for paying customers
• Zoom Chat also has improvements for developers

In its effort to become the go-to “AI-first work platform for human connection” – a term coined by the company in its Zoom 2.0 rebranding in November 2024 – Zoom has introduced a series of new AI tools to its Team Chats.

The redesigned Team Chat sidebar includes new organization functions like drag-and-drop tab arrangement, advanced sorting and filtering.

Key to the updated Team Chat sidebar are the new AI Companion enhancements, which include conversation summarization in select chats and channels, action item identification and information retrieval through an improve search feature.

Zoom overhauls its Team Chat sidebar with AI

“With Zoom Team Chat, you can do cross-product work and be more productive with Zoom Workplace’s AI-first products like Zoom Docs, Zoom Meetings, and Zoom Whiteboard," Zoom CPO Smita Hashim commented.

In a bid to cater to its developer users, Zoom has also added code block and in-line code support to help users format and share code from within the application.

“Our new Team Chat sidebar design takes this to the next level by empowering users to collaborate smarter and customize their workspace to fit their preferred workflow," added Hashim.

"With AI Companion… users can triage and track their messages more easily, saving time and allowing them to focus on what matters most.”

The redesigned sidebar and AI Companion are available to paying Zoom Workplace subscribers for no additional charge.

The new changes are part of CEO Eric Yuan’s plan to make Zoom 2.0 a “fully customizable digital twin” that can save employees an entire working day each week in unproductive time.

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