Asking in-meeting questions with the AI Companion

Meeting questions with AI Companion uses AI technology, which may include third-party models, to allow meeting participants to ask questions about the content of the meeting discussions. 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.

Learn more about other Zoom AI Companion features and how Zoom AI Companion features handle your data.

Requirements for using AI Companion

Notes:

Limitations of AI Companion

Table of Contents

How to start AI Companion during a meeting

Start AI Companion as the host

When the meeting starts, the host can manually start AI Companion so that it is available to in-meeting participants. Meeting hosts can also configure AI Companion to be automatically available to meeting participants when meetings start.

  1. Start a meeting as the host with the Zoom desktop app.
  2. In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion .
    The AI Companion panel will open in the meeting. 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.
  3. Click the settings icon at the top of the panel.
  4. Under Who can ask questions about this meeting’s transcript?, select which group of meeting participants can interact with AI Companion:
  5. 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.
  6. 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.

Enablement requests during a meeting

If the host does have AI Companion enabled for their meetings, any meeting participants can request that it be started for the current meeting.

If the host does not have AI Companion enabled for their meetings, the host, co-hosts, and any participants can request that it be enabled.

Request AI Companion as a participant

If the host does not have AI Companion enabled for the current meeting, the host and any participants can request this be enabled for use. Learn more about how the host or an admin handles enablement during a meeting.

  1. Join a meeting with the Zoom desktop app.
  2. In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion .
    If not currently enabled for the meeting, the participant will be prompted to request feature enablement.
  3. Click Send Request.
    The request will be sent to the host (if an admin) or any admins in the current meeting. If no admins are present, an email request is sent instead.

Stop AI Companion as the host

If the host wants to discuss topics without AI Companion running for in-meeting queries, they can disable AI Companion, so those topics will not be available for analysis and questions.

  1. In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion .
    The AI Companion panel will open on the right side of the meeting window.
  2. In the top-left corner, click Disable.
    You will be prompted to confirm disabling AI Companion in the current meeting.
  3. Click Disable to confirm.

How to ask questions about the meeting with AI Companion

With AI Companion active for the meeting, participants will be able to ask questions about the meeting based on the meeting transcript. The meeting host’s settings control if participants can ask questions about the meeting including from which point in the meeting they can ask questions (e.g. from the start of the meeting, or from only when they joined.) 


While optimized for meeting-related queries, AI Companion may respond to general questions using its broader knowledge base when unrelated to the discussion.

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 the available data sources.
  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.

Differences for Users with the AI Companion side panel enabled

For participants who do not have the AI Companion panel in Zoom Workplace enabled, they will only be able to use the panel in meetings where the Meeting questions feature is enabled. However, participants who have the enabled AI Companion panel in Zoom Workplace enabled can also use the in-meeting panel to ask questions of AI Companion to access data sources outside of the meeting (i.e., other than the current meeting transcript), including their available Zoom data, such as Team Chat data, or any third-party data sources available to them based on in their account settings. If a meeting host has disabled AI Companion from accessing that meeting, an enabled user may use their AI Companion panel to ask questions in the meeting but AI Companion will not have access to the meeting transcript and therefore will not be able to answer questions related to the content of the meeting.

Managing Meeting Transcript Usage

Account owners and administrators can enable audio transcripts generated to provide AI Companion Meeting features to be retained and used for other AI Companion features; for example, users can ask post meeting questions using the AI Companion panel, or they can generate Zoom Docs from meeting transcripts. 

Supported languages for AI Companion questions

AI Companion Questions supports meetings, as well as questions and responses, in the languages below, with most languages being provided in public preview and requiring version 5.16.6 or higher. The quality of supported languages varies by language, audio quality, and other factors, but Zoom is working to improve quality.

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For conversations in languages other than English, ensuring that your caption language is set correctly helps AI Companion in accurately transcribing your speech, which in turn improves the quality of the generated transcript for AI Companion questions. If captions are disabled or were not previously used, English is chosen by default, but if you have previously chosen a speaking language, that will be used instead. If a mismatch is detected between your chosen spoken language and the language you are actually speaking, AI Companion will detect and adapt to the speaking language detected.