Zoom’s AI-Powered Avatars May Bring Us Closer to a Four-Day Workweek, Says CEO

Zoom may introduce AI avatars that would attend meetings on behalf of the user, CEO Eric Yuan recently said in an interview. This would reportedly enable the users of the video conferencing platform to focus more on in-person interactions, and possibly have a four-day work week. Yuan also discussed the future of Zoom, emphasising that it is not just a video conferencing platform, with the aim of taking on giants such as 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, especially AI avatars. When it comes to video conferencing, Yuan said that people do not need to spend time in five to six meetings every day. Instead, “You can leverage the AI to do that.”

Thus, AI avatars, coupled with the platform’s phone, chat, messaging, and project management tools, may get people 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 may be possible when everyone has their own Large Language Model (LLM) that will serve as the foundation of the AI-powered digital twin. “All of us, we will have our own LLM. Essentially, that’s the foundation for the digital twin. Then I can count on my digital twin. Sometimes I want to join, so I join. If I do not want to join, I can send a digital twin to join. That’s the future.”

Having personal LLMs may also help the AI avatar better at specific things than the user itself by tweaking the parameters. Providing an example of himself attending meetings related to sales while not being good at it, Yuan said, “For that meeting I say, ‘Hey, tune that parameter to have better negotiation skills, send that version, and join’.”

Talking about the technology required to fulfil the vision of AI avatars, Yuan said AI, along with Augmented Reality (AR) “will help us get there”. However, he also emphasised that the technologies aren’t there yet.