Zoomtopia 2023: All About Zoom AI Companion

AI is the theme of 2023, from analyst meetings to user events and certainly in posts on No Jitter. Almost one year after the very public announcement of the OpenAI beta of ChatGPT, communications solutions providers have moved beyond talking about AI-powered plans to delivering solutions.

True to the year’s theme, AI was a key theme at Zoomtopia, Zoom’s annual user conference, held October 1-3, 2023, in San Jose, California. During the event, I had the opportunity to interview Mahesh Ram, head of AI applications, Zoom. While AI is relatively new to many in the contact center and unified communications spaces, AI has been an important part of Ram’s life for almost a decade.

Ram was the founding CEO of Solvvy, started in August 2015 and acquired by Zoom in May 2022. Solvvy was a pioneer in applying AI, machine learning and natural language process science to reinvent the enterprise customer experience. Co-founded with two PhD's from Carnegie-Mellon University (Mehdi Samadi and Justin Betteridge). In addition to Ram, Betteridge continues at Zoom as Head of Engineering, contact center digital customer experience.

In the video, embedded here, Ram answers the following questions:

1. The big news at Zoomtopia is about AI Companion. Can give you a sense of what AI Companion is and how it applies to the contact center?
2. Zoom AI Companion for Higher Ed and Healthcare was announced at Zoomtopia. What changes are made to the generic product that makes it specific to those verticals?
3. One of the key tenants of Zoom AI is a federated approach. What AI models are used for AI Companion, primarily Zoom proprietary models or other models?
4. Beyond agents and customers, an additional promise of Zoom AI is faster deployment of Zoom Virtual Agent using Gen AI to create ready-to-publish flows. How does the use of Gen AI affect speed of deployment?
5. Is Zoom using Generative AI to build features, and come to market faster?

Special thanks to good friend, colleague and fellow Enterprise Connect speaker, Juanita Coley, CEO of Solid Rock Consulting, for her unparalleled video skills in capturing and editing this video.