At Zoomtopia 2023 today, Zoom announced Zoom Docs, a collaboration-focused “modular workspace” that integrates the company’s Zoom AI Companion for generating new content or populating a doc from other sources — you know the drill by now.
Along with the Mail and Calendar offerings launched during last year’s event, Zoom Docs is another step toward a full office suite alternative to Google Workspace and Microsoft 365, which both have started to integrate AI-powered tools of their own, dubbed Duet AI and Copilot, respectively. The company says it will be widely available in 2024.
Like other AI helper software, users can ask Zoom AI Companion to do things like summarize meetings, chats, and information from inside Zoom Docs or generate in-document tables. Zoom Docs support interdocument linking and embedding, hierarchical organization with folders, and docs can be managed from meetings, Zoom’s Team Chat, or directly through a browser or Zoom’s desktop and mobile applications.
The setup looks more focused on team collaboration than spreadsheets and presentations like Microsoft’s and Google’s mature productivity suites, and Zoom AI Companion is cheaper.
Zoom AI Companion is included in the price of the company’s paid subscription plans, which start at $149.90 per year per user. Microsoft charges an extra $30 per user per month for 365 Copilot, and Google has said it will do the same. Zoom didn’t mention specific pricing for its Zoom Docs app but includes one year of access to its “Essential Apps” with paid subscriptions. If a team doesn’t tend to use their office tools outside of note-taking and meetings, that could help Zoom keep business customers who are trying to spend less on their remote office software.
