Zoom is going to let an AI-generated avatar speak for you: Here’s how it will work

Zoom is getting closer to allowing AI avatars to attend meetings for you. As part of a broader AI expansion, Zoom has announced that it will soon allow you to create an AI avatar of yourself that you can use to send messages to your colleagues.

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To create a digital avatar, you will need to record an initial video of yourself that Zoom’s AI will use to create an avatar that looks and even sounds like you.

From there, you can write the message you want your avatar to say and let it speak for you. This feature will only work with the Zoom Clips feature, which allows you to record brief video updates for your colleagues.

Fear of the possibilities this entails

Zoom is considering the possibility of deepfakes. Smita Hashim, Chief Product Officer of Zoom, stated in a press conference that the company “is handling it very carefully, with advanced authentication, watermarking technology, and strict usage policies.”

Personalized AI avatars will be launched early next year as part of Zoom’s custom AI Companion add-on, which will cost an additional $12 per month. If you don’t have the add-on but do have a paid Zoom subscription, Zoom will still allow you to create clips using pre-set AI avatars and voices… which is just as eerie as creating AI avatars of yourself.

During an interview on Decoder in June, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan mentioned his goal of allowing you to send a “digital twin” to meetings and calls while you are doing something else.

“Today, for this session, ideally I wouldn’t have to join. I could send a digital version of myself to join, so I can go to the beach,” said Yuan as an example.

Along with AI avatars, the new custom Zoom add-on will allow its AI to integrate with more third-party productivity apps, such as Zendesk and Asana, in addition to introducing new customization options that you can use to create custom meeting summary templates.