How I am using the AI Companion in Zoom

This week’s post in the “How I am using AI” series is from Jeremy Clement, Senior Instructor in Hospitality & Tourism Management and Director of the BHC Service Leadership Scholars Program. Jeremy supervises a few dozen internships every semester, and has found a fantastic tool to expedite his work. Jeremy is a member of the School of Business Gen-AI Taskforce.

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I was recently tasked with writing a short article about using the AI companion on Zoom. So, as you read this, you should know it’s not actually me writing. I am using the AI companion in Zoom to tell you a story about using the AI companion in Zoom. And this is the Summary of my Zoom session…with a couple of tweaks, of course!

I have used the AI Companion tool since Zoom introduced it last year.

As an internship coordinator, I have to review midterm and final reports for all of our interns, each semester. The internship reports can be lengthy. Reviewing them and providing substantive feedback for students can be a lot of work: something I always wish I could do better, faster.

When I turned on the AI companion last year, I was immediately struck by the amount of detail provided by Zoom.  Now, the AI Companion catches everything when recording myself going through a report page by page.  And I can simply share that recording with students for their review and integration into their next report.

In the past, I’ve not always been sure that the feedback was clearly received by students. But with the new AI companion I am able to not only provide a video of my feedback, but also all of the supporting information that Zoom provides.

This includes:

• an Audio Transcript (with highlights!) – you can even choose to only share/play the highlights if you tend to get a little wordy…like me!
• a Summary with ‘Smart Chapters’ – essentially Zoom will break up your content by subject matter and report on it accordingly
• Next Steps – a bulleted list of action items mentioned in the recording
•  And finally, My Meeting Coach – a development tool that allows me, the producer, to review my production stats and adjust as needed

It’s honestly pretty cool. I was blown away by the overall accuracy and Zoom’s ability to interpret what I was saying and doing throughout the video. And, if you’re like me, you might have been a little nervous or even averse to using AI at first. What I needed to understand is that it’s really all about efficiency gains. And that’s something that I really, really appreciate!

Zoom’s AI companion is probably one of the most approachable AI solutions I’ve come across. It’s really no bother. Once you log into Zoom, all you have to do is toggle on the AI companion, and you’re set. The next time you go to a summary video of a recording you’ve made, you’ll find a slew of incredible resources to complement your video.

I find it tremendously valuable, and the positive feedback from students was almost instantaneous. Better yet, there’s really no prompt engineering or AI application design to be done by the user. It’s just turning it on and seeing what happens next!

If you’re curious about AI, but intimidated by all the knowledge required to wield it well, this might just be the right introduction for you!  And I hope that some of my colleagues will read this and give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised, as I was.