Zoom’s AI Companion has the potential to be an effective tool for improving notetaking and reducing the stress of capturing important details during meetings. Instead of scrambling to jot down key points or worrying about missing critical information, users can now rely on structured summaries generated at the end of each meeting. This allows participants to stay engaged in discussions and easily review action items without relying solely on personal notes. Zoom users at the university now have access to these tools, which can help streamline meetings and improve accessibility for everyone.
“As the meeting facilitator, I found the AI notes quite helpful when I was composing my own summary to send out to attendees. It reminded me of some of the topics and comments that I wouldn’t have recalled otherwise,” said Sydney Brown, assistant director of the Center for Transformative Teaching, after trying Zoom AI in a recent meeting of the AI Skill Share learning community. “Oh, and it was really good at capturing action items, at least for me,” she added, laughing.
Brian Wilson, CTT senior instructional designer, shares some of the new features and tools provided by Zoom AI.
Meeting Summaries
Zoom’s AI Companion can generate a written summary of meeting discussions and key action points, which can be shared through email or Teams chat. Instead of relying on handwritten notes or memory, participants can refer back to the summary for a structured record of the conversation.
- Only the meeting host and co-host can enable or disable Meeting Summaries.
- Summaries are emailed to the host after the meeting concludes.
- To retain access beyond Zoom’s retention period, summaries should be downloaded and archived.
This feature is particularly useful for those who need a written recap of key decisions and discussions.
In-Meeting Questions
Participants who need clarification or have missed part of a discussion can use In-Meeting Questions to get up to speed without interrupting the conversation.
- The meeting host has control over enabling or disabling this feature.
- Participants can submit questions within the platform.
- Answers are provided without disrupting the speaker.
This tool helps ensure all participants stay engaged, whether they need additional context or prefer to review responses in writing.
Screen Share with OCR
When presenters share their screens, optical character recognition can convert images of text into machine-readable content. This improves the accuracy of AI-generated responses and summaries by making the shared content easier to reference later.
These Zoom AI Companion tools aim to make meetings more efficient and structured, offering a way for faculty and staff to focus on discussion rather than manual notetaking.
“Next time I use it and I’m the facilitator; I’m going to try and be clearer about changing topics and connecting comments and questions with discussions and conclusions or areas of consensus. I want to see to what degree it improves the AI summary,” Brown said.
When to use Zoom AI Companion
Obviously, Zoom AI not the right tool for all meetings. Amy Ort, senior instructional designer, says that like recording a session, it’s important to let attendees know about its use at the beginning of the session.
For more details on enabling and using Zoom AI Companion's features, visit the university’s IT services page. For a deeper dive into the various features and how to use it effectively, visit Zoom's how-to page.
More details at: https://go.unl.edu/ZoomAI