UT Zoom and AI

Zoom AI Companion

Zoom’s AI Companion meeting summary and smart recording highlights can now be enabled on your UT Zoom account.  

UT Zoom is currently configured with the following security options enabled for Zoom AI Companion: 

  • Zoom Model Only (ZMO) 

  • Zero Data Retention (ZDR) 

These features allow for a more private, secure experience with Zoom AI features, but you may see limitations in features and output. We will continue to test and monitor and feedback on your experience is appreciated. 

As with any AI tools, all UT Zoom users are expected to practice acceptable use of AI Tools when hosting or attending Zoom events utilizing Zoom AI Companion features. 

How to activate AI Companion on your account

Go to your web portal account settings (click “Settings” in the left panel) and look for the AI Companion tab. From here, you can enable and customize Meeting Summary and Smart Recording Highlights.

highlighting the AI Companion settings tab within Zoom settings


 

Meeting Summary

Meeting Summary with Zoom AI Companion uses AI technology, which may include third-party models, and allows meeting hosts to initiate an AI-generated summary of their meeting. When the host enables this feature in a meeting, participants may automatically receive a summary after the meeting ends, if the host chose to share the summary with participants. Meeting Summaries are supported in more than 30 languages.   

You can customize Meeting Summary to include the following information to add context to your summaries: 

  • Shared Screen content with OCR, which will scan shared screen content using Optical Character Recognition to generate relevant information for the summary from shared screen content 

  • Use Meeting chat messages, which will include meeting chat information as part of the summary to provide context. 

Smart Recording

Smart Recording brings the power of Zoom AI Companion to cloud recordings, allowing you to organize your cloud recording into sections called smart chapters, get the key takeaways in a quick and digestible format through recording highlights, identify action items to take after the meeting or webinar with next steps, and even provide the host analytics on key meeting and conversation factors, including talk speed, talk-listen ratio, longest spiel (or monologue), filler word usage, and patience.. This feature is especially useful for long meetings and webinars – such as a lecture, brainstorming session, or company all-hands – where you may want to divvy up the recording for easier viewing. 

How to start Meeting Summary as the host

Once Meeting Summary has been enabled in the AI Companion settings, the host can enable AI Companion in meeting using the following steps.

  1. Start a meeting from the Zoom desktop client. 

  1. On the in-meeting controls, click Summary . 
    The meeting summary will begin to be generated, and participants will see a notification informing them that Meeting Summary is active. 

  1. Click Stop Summary  to end generating the summary of the current meeting. 

Once the meeting has ended, the meeting summary will be finalized and sent out shortly for viewing. 

Allow attendees to ask AI Companion questions during meetings

The AI Companion feature uses AI technology to allow meeting participants to ask questions about the content of the meeting thus far. Preset questions are provided, such as “Catch me up”, “Was my name mentioned?”, and “What are the action items?”, which can be useful for catching up when you join late or return after stepping away from the meeting. More specific custom questions are also possible, like “Was a date agreed on?” and “Was there a decision on the name?”. Meetings, as well as questions and responses, are supported in more than 30 languages.

Hosts can enable this feature in their AI Companion settings by searching for Allow users to ask AI Companion questions about the meeting.

Once enabled:
Start a meeting as the host with the Zoom desktop app.

  1. In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion .
    The AI Companion panel will open in the meeting.
  2. Under Who can ask questions to AI Companion?, select which group of meeting participants can interact with AI Companion:
    • All participants: Allows all participants to ask questions about all discussion since AI Companion is active.
    • All participants only from when they join: Allows all participants to ask questions about discussion since they joined the current meeting.
    • Only hosts: Allow only the original host, alternative host, and users with host privileges assigned before the meeting starts to ask questions about all discussions since AI Companion is active.
  3. Click Start to begin having the meeting conversations analyzed.
    A transcript of the meeting will begin to be generated for AI Companion to reference, and participants will see a notification informing them that AI Companion is active.
  4. Click Got it to confirm.
    The meeting discussions will begin to be analyzed, and participants will see a notification informing them that AI Companion is active.

 

With AI Companion active for the meeting, all participants will be able to ask questions about the meeting discussions thus far. Its important to ensure that your caption language is set correctly, as this ensures AI Companion is transcribing your speaking language correctly, which improves the quality of the generated transcript for AI Companion questions. If no caption language has been set, English is used by default.

  1. In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion .
    The AI Companion panel will open on the right side of the meeting window.
    Note: If this is the first time opening AI Companion in the current meeting, some typical preset questions are provided. Any subsequent views of the panel for the current meeting will have your questions and responses thus far shown instead.
  2. Click a provided question, or click the text compose box at the bottom of the panel to enter a custom question.
    Zoom’s AI Companion will provide a generated response based on what it has heard and properly analyzed thus far in the meeting.
  3. (Optional) Click either thumbs up or thumbs down to rate the generated response.
  4. Enter another custom question, or click the ellipsis "..." to view additional preset questions.


 

External 3rd party AI Bots in UT Zoom Meetings

By default, meetings created on UT Zoom will require authentication for all participants and will not allow external accounts including AI bots. However, if you have disabled authentication requirements (or allowed non-UT Zoom accounts with "Sign in to Zoom" selected), you may receive Waiting Room notifications that a bot (such as OtterPilot) is requesting to be allowed in.

  • You may deny AI bots or any other external guests' requests ad hoc if your Waiting Room automatically places external accounts in the Waiting Room.
  • If a bot enters your meeting, you may remove it manually by clicking Remove next to the bot's name. This will dismiss a participant from the meeting. They won't be able to rejoin unless you allow participants to rejoin
  • You can block specific bots by using the section below to block Domains from entering your meetings
Blocking external AI bots from your public meetings and webinars

1. Go to your Zoom settings
2. In the meeting tab, search "Block users in specific domains from joining meetings and webinars" and enable the slider
3. Click the pencil icon to edit the list and include the domains of the AI accounts that may be attempting to join (example: "otter.ai, read.ai")
4. Click Save
 

Highlighting of the blocked domains feature