Zoom CEO Says AI Avatars Could Enable Four-Day Workweek
Zoom may introduce AI avatars that will attend meetings on behalf of users, CEO Eric Yuan recently said in an interview. This would reportedly allow users of the videoconferencing platform to focus more on in-person interactions and potentially have a four-day workweek. Yuan also discussed Zoom’s future, stressing that it’s not just a videoconferencing platform, with the aim of taking on giants like Microsoft and Google in the enterprise software industry.
Zoom AI Avatars on Zoom
In a conversation with The Verge’s Nilay Patel, the CEO highlighted Zoom’s investment in the artificial intelligence (AI) space, specifically AI avatars. When it comes to video conferencing, Yuan said people don’t need to spend time in five to six meetings every day. Instead, “you can use the AI to do that.”
For example, AI avatars, coupled with the platform’s phone, chat, messaging and project management tools, can help people move closer to a four-day workweek. “That’s the direction. That’s part of our Workplace [platform]“It’s our 2.0 journey,” Yuan added.
According to the CEO, this could be possible if everyone has their own Large Language Model (LLM) that will serve as the basis for the AI-driven digital twin. “All of us, we will have our own LLM. In essence, that is the basis for the digital twin. Then I can count on my digital twin. Sometimes I want to participate, so I participate. If I don’t want to participate, I can send a digital twin to participate. That’s the future.”
Having personal LLMs can also help the AI avatar do specific things better than the user itself by adjusting the parameters. Yuan gave an example of himself attending sales meetings when he wasn’t good at them: “Before that meeting, I say, ‘Hey, adjust that parameter to have better negotiation skills, send that version and join.'”
Talking about the technology needed to fulfill the vision of AI avatars, Yuan said that AI, along with Augmented Reality (AR), “will help us get there.” However, he also stressed that the technologies are not there yet.
