Everyday AI Podcast – An AI and ChatGPT Podcast - EP 237: Zoom Exec Tells How AI is Changing Real-Time Collaboration

Episode Date: March 27, 2024

If you want a successful business in the age of AI, you need to be able to collaborate in real-time. With the combination of COVID and generative AI, the way we work has completely changed. Zoom's CPO, Smita Hashim, joins us to discuss how AI is changing real-time collaboration.Awesome Stuff From Our Partner, NVIDIA -Register for the FREE virtual NVIDIA GTC Conference or buy tickets to the in-person event and fill out this form here: https://www.youreverydayai.com/nvidia-giveaway/Newsletter: Sign up for our free daily newsletterMore on this Episode: Episode PageJoin the discussion: Ask Jordan and Smita questions on AI and ZoomRelated Episodes:Ep 146: IBM Leader Talks Infusing GenAI in Enterprise Workflows for Big WinsEp 216: How to stand out in a world filled with AI startups – Insights from Taplio CTOUpcoming Episodes: Check out the upcoming Everyday AI Livestream lineupWebsite: YourEverydayAI.comEmail The Show: [e-mail] with Jordan on LinkedInTimestamps:01:45 About Smita and her role at Zoom05:30 How real-time collaboration has changed.10:12 Generative AI has transformative, practical possibilities.11:30 Zoom announces new Zoom Workplace features17:54 Zoom AI companion streamlines data for efficiency.21:30 Next steps for AI and real-time collaborationTopics Covered in This Episode:1. Importance of Real-Time Collaboration2. Zoom Enterprise Connect event3.  New Zoom Workplace Features and AI Integration4. Future of Real-Time Collaboration and AI Keywords:Generative AI, Real-time collaboration, Remote working, Hybrid working, Zoom, Chief product officer, Enterprise Connect, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Video communication, Zoom Workplace, Zoom AI companion, Productivity, Whiteboard functionality, Docs collaboration, Meetings summarization, Chats summarization, Zoom phone, Flexible work, Information overload, Data privacy, Total employee experience, Content production tool, Productivity software suite, Customer engagement, Multimodal, Security, Immersive reality, Augmented reality, Employee engagementSend Everyday AI and Jordan a text message. (We can't reply back unless you leave contact info) Start Here ▶️Not sure where to start when it comes to AI? Start with our Start Here Series. You can listen to the first drop -- Episode 691 -- or get free access to our Inner Cricle community and all episodes: StartHereSeries.com Also, here's a link to the entire series on a Spotify playlist. 

This is the Everyday AI Show, the everyday podcast where we simplify AI and bring its power to your fingertips. Listen daily for practical advice to boost your career, business, and everyday life. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in Adobe Firefly, the All In One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create and the assistant handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome. The assistant accelerates execution. If you want to have a successful business in the age of generative AI,

you have to be able to work and collaborate in real time. Not just the pandemic has changed how we work in hybrid and remote working in office. It's something different every day. So it isn't just kind of post-pandemic work life that has changed how we collaborate in real time. but obviously the advent of just different generative AI tools. It is changing the way that business gets done. And if you want to stay ahead, you have to keep up. All right, we're going to be talking about that today and more on everyday AI.

Thank you for joining us. If you're joining this live, thanks as always, make sure to check out the show notes. If you're joining us on the podcast as well, we're going to get a little visual in this one, but not too much. And as always, a lot more information on the podcast, as well as our daily news, So we're going to be talking a lot today. I'm actually excited. We have the chief product officer from Zoom, and we're going to be going over some new Zoom announcements.

So you're not going to want to miss those. We're going to have a lot more in our newsletter at your EverydayAI.com. I tell people it is a free generative AI university. More than now 230 episodes, no matter what you want to learn about, we've talked to experts in those fields. And we will have the daily news. Technically, this is pre-recorded by a couple hours. You know, we're talking to people from all over the country, a very busy day today.

But let's go ahead and talk about how AI can change real-time collaboration. There we go. Joining us, we have Smita Hashim, who is the chief product officer from Zoom. Smita, thank you so much for joining the Everyday AI show. Thank you for having me, Jordan. I'm really excited to be here. All right. And, hey, if you are joining this life, you can see that Samita's in an event right now.

So right now we are in the midst of Zoom Enterprise Connect, right? Like, Samita, can you tell us a little bit about first your role, but then we'll get a little bit more into what's going on right behind you? So tell us a little bit about what you do at the chief product officer at Zoom. Yes, Jordan. So I am, as you said, the chief product officer at Zoom, which means I'm responsible for the entire product portfolio and strategy. And I'm sure you are familiar in many of your audience.

audience is familiar with Zoom, Zoom meeting, Zoom chat, Zoom phone, Zoom contact center. So I own that entire product portfolio and, you know, and I consider it really a privilege to be here at Zoom building these products which users love. So that's my role. I love video. I love video communication. So I feel like it's a dream job for me. And then for me, where I'm at, I'm at Enterprise Connect right now. It is a huge show. on unified communications and as well as customer communications. So you cast plus Ccast. I'm on the trade show floor.

There's a big Zoom booth behind me with a lot of attendees. And yes, there's a lot of excitement going on. All right. So I can't, I can't wait to talk about some of those new announcements. They are fresh from Zoom with the Zoom workplace. But pun intended, I first want to zoom out, right? Before we get into all the new excitement, we got to keep you listening and watching to the end. Right.

But Samita, can you, share a little bit about your background because it's extremely impressive, right? You know, because a lot of times I like to tell people, you know, we don't just push a single product, you know, a single service on this show. But even your background, when it comes to real-time collaboration, is extremely impressive. Tell us a little bit about your background and where you've worked before Zoom. Yeah, absolutely. So before Zoom, I was at Microsoft for some time where I was responsible for real-time

communications aspects of Microsoft teams. Before that, I spent a lot of time at Google working on many different products, but I was responsible for Google Meet during the pandemic search and Google Voice and Google Calendar and the meat hardware. So many products over there. I worked on many other products too, from like devices to, you know, to like very metrics-driven products. I did a PhD in video compression way back. So, you know, so video has been video communications, connecting people, flexible work. That has been something which I'm super passionate about.

And, you know, and that's my history. So, yeah, so. And Zoom to me is special, special because Zoom has truly transformed flexible work and not just for the employees, but also for customer-facing agents. So I feel like as a world, we work differently. now and Zoom to me has the biggest portfolio, the best quality and really embodies customer care and speed of innovation. Yeah. And Smita, like even just what you said there, if you are

working in any hybrid or remote capacity, you probably use all the tools that you just mentioned, right, between Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google meets. So I'm curious, right? So you've been working in this space for way more than a decade. How have you even seen real-time collaboration change throughout the last 10 or 15 years? Yeah. I feel like actually to me it is incredible where we are in terms of real-time communication and collaboration. If you think, I mean, video communication or all of us used phones for a long time, we used emails, right? And then we, we, We started moving to chat-based product, video started coming in. And there was already traction on these technologies and moving to unified communication.

If you remember the old days, you'd walk into the airport and you would see the Zoom ads. We'd say, meet happy, right? So things were transforming and they were changing. But then we went through the pandemic. And I would say, I mean, it was a very, very hard time for so many of us. But to me, the gift of pandemic is the normalization of flexibility. work and helping all of us connect in ways that is more flexible. So, you know, so we have gone through that phase.

I feel like flexible work is really what most of the world is doing right now. Even if companies are bringing you back in office, you are still some of your employees, some of your colleagues are going to be remote. Your partners are remote. Your customers, you're connecting with them. So I feel like this normalization of flexible work is an amazing opportunity, but it's also a huge challenge for all of us to get this right and make sure we do it in effective ways. You know, I remember, you know, being on my first, you know, probably Zoom call like, I don't

know, eight years ago. And at the time, it was almost like this cutting edge, right? Like this brand new thing and you had to walk, you know, walk people over. But now it's just a verb, right? But I'm wondering even through your personal experience, having worked on, you know, three of the biggest video calling projects, or three of the biggest video collaboration tools ever, right? Can you walk me through even? What was it like for you early on, maybe eight, 10, 12 years ago when you were doing some of your first video calls for business? I want to talk about what that was like for you as you built these products for so long. I feel like, yeah, I think way, way back, I actually remember, and this is I'm dating myself, when we had very poor quality internet connections, I remember the days of the dial-up modems,

video did not work in those days at all. It was such a novelty. And then as video started scaling up and started becoming more mainstream, I think there were challenges around, like how many people could get on a call at the same time. What was the quality of the call? Did it really work on every single device? Could I just get into it and get out of it? It felt like it was there, but it was not there. You couldn't really count on it all the time.

I think that is what has shifted is that I think Zoom came and changed the game. Zoom made the quality amazing. And Zoom does it because they go deep on every, like whether you are on a MacBook or a Windows laptop or a mobile phone. go deep and they make the quality really, really good. And then the infrastructure and the connectivity has expanded. So, I mean, it's like a dial tone with your better work. And I feel like some companies provide a better dial tone than others. But, but, you know, but that is where we are at right now. And it's pretty, it's pretty amazing when you think about it, where things

have come. Yeah. And even, you know, not just, you know, what you mentioned, yes, like internet speeds, You know, video call quality now makes it feel much more collaborative. But even, you know, if you look at pre generative AI versus post generative AI, I know even for myself personally, I'm a former journalist. So, you know, five, eight years ago in those rare occurrences when I was on a video call, I would be typing, you know, typing the notes. I would try to record it. But it was so hard back then, right?

Like the processor couldn't keep up. It might crash. But at least for me, I felt that. sometimes before generative AI, a video call was actually more cumbersome than in person. Now I think it's the opposite. What was your take even on like pre-generative AI and how generative AI is changing, you know, video calls in real-time collaboration in general? Yeah, absolutely.

So generative AI, I feel like it's, gender to be, we all have to be thoughtful and we have to cut across the hype. and we have to make it real. But it is really, it can really transform the routine, the mundane, where you spend a lot of like our mind share and cycles. Imagine if you had an amazing note taker that could accompany us to every meeting and you could just focus on the conversation. Those are the kind of possibilities generative AI can provide. And those are the possibilities that we are making,

we have made real in the last like few months. We launched Zoom AI companion and we have made that available. not just for meetings, but across a variety of other products. So I think that is the true potential of generative AI, is that it can help users reclaim time be a lot more efficient. And then what it does is it opens your mind up, it opens your space up for creativity, for collaboration. So we can all do more meaningful world, get more business impact.

I think that is where the power lies in these kind of like new exciting changes that are coming in. All right. Speaking of new excited changes, I think I made everyone wait long enough. So let's talk about what we have going on there at Enterprise Connect. So if you're joining live, I have the announcement up on the screen. But Smita, maybe if you could walk us through what has been announced at Zoom Enterprise with the new Zoom workplace.

Absolutely. So, Jordan, Zoom has gone so far beyond. meetings. Customers love Zoom and they've been asking us to do more. So we have meetings, we have phone, we have chat, we have the communication products and we have been adding products which help you with productivity like whiteboard, notes, clips, we announced Zoom docs. We acquired work Vivo for employee engagement. So, you know, so how can you keep a flexible, distributed team, work styles really engaged and amazing products for in office. When you're coming into office, you're collaborating with people in the office as well as outside the office.

Workspace reservations, amazing conference rooms with AI built in, visitor management. So we are putting all of these together into Zoom workplace. So that is a big announcement. So Zoom Workplace is here for you as your AI-powered collaboration platform. AI is built into all parts of Zoom Workplace. And we want every customer, every user. to benefit from it. Zoom AI companion is a generative AI assistant. It is included at no additional cost. This is a radical move which we did. We did that because we want everyone to have that productivity

boost. So Zoom AI companion is going to be available across. So that's a big announcement. Zoom workplace. It's about really reimagining teamwork with this modern AI powered collaboration platform that It just works and it innovates really fast. Okay, a lot, a lot to unpack there, right? A lot to unpack there. Right? I essentially just heard like a handful of even just new products. So showing here on the screen, so we now we have a whiteboard functionality, all real

time, docs as well as the AI companion. So I'm sharing on my screen now from the announcement blog post, this kind of whiteboard feature and functionality, which I think is huge for real-time collaboration. I think sometimes you can talk about it all you want, but if it's just eight people talking, that can be hard. So, Smita, can you walk us through even just, you know, as an example, some of these other features specifically, you know, kind of this whiteboarding and the docs collaboration? Yeah.

So, I mean, whiteboarding, we have, you know, whiteboarding is our whiteboard product. We have had that. Docs is coming later in summer. It is really an AI-powered, very modular platform. But what is really exciting about all of these products is, one is their quality and they just work. But second, they are all elevated with Zoom AI companion. So let me tell you more about Zoom AI companion.

Zoom AI companion, within meetings, we talked about it. Zoom AI companion is there. It can summarize meetings. it can get you next steps and really high quality next steps. So actually, our CTO just published a blog today, which is showing how Zoom AI companion for our popular features is beating the quality of GPD4. Let me repeat that.

It is beating the quality of GPD4 and we included at no additional cost. That is because of the innovations we do. When you think of other products like Zoom Team 4, chat, you can compose chats, you can summarize those threads. So if I'm like, I'm very busy right now, as you can imagine. But for me, it's super easy to catch up on the charts that I missed. I can just go and summarize them and I can catch up in minutes at the end of the day. It saves me so much time. If I'm in Zoom whiteboard, then I can create a whiteboard just calling Zoom AI companion. The big new announcements which we are adding, because we continue to innovate an AI companion, it's

coming to Zoom phone. So when you get all those voicemails and I bet Jordan, sometimes you get a lot of them, is that it prioritizes those for you. It extracts tasks for you. And then we are also broadening AI companion to come across the entire platform. So it can work across your meetings, chat, phone.

It can do things like, hey, prepare for my customer meeting and let's extract all of that information, just prepare you. So this is a quick summary of all of the things that we are launching. We move fast. We have 40 new features as part of this launch. But I'll focus on the AI ones first for the everyday AI audience. There we go. And in spite of one other thing, you know, so even on this blog post here, it's talking that 80% of global workers experience information overload.

So, you know, even for us, right, like, I'm excited to use this now. I was just on a Zoom call, you know, 10 minutes before we jumped on. to record this live stream and this podcast. And I'll even say it right now, I haven't been using all of Zoom's AI feature. So I'm excited about these new announcements now, but I would have to use, you know, a third party AI assistant. And then I might have an automation, you know, that would take the transcript from there and send it somewhere else.

So can you talk a little bit now about how all of these things kind of coming together in the workplace can maybe help combat that staff that we're talking about, there that 80% of global workers experience information overload. Adobe just introduced an entirely new way to create, bringing the power and precision of its creative suite into one conversational experience. Meet Firefly AI Assistant, now live in the Adobe Firefly app, the all-in-one creative AI studio. Powered by Adobe's creative agent, Firefly AI assistant lets you start with your vision, just

describe what you want, and shape the outcome as it takes form with the assistant. The assistant orchestrates multi-step workflows, drawing on 60-plus pro-grade tools across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom Express, and more to help bring your ideas to life. You can also get started with creative skills, a growing library of pre-built workflows for common creative tasks, like batch editing photos, creating mood boards, portrait retouching, and creating social variations. Every step the assistant takes is visible, so you can refine, redirect or take over at any time. You stay in the driver's seat as the creative director.

Adobe Firefly AI assistant now in public beta. See it today at firefly.adopi.com. Yeah, I mean, Jordan, really I would say I'm so excited about flexible work, but I also feel like it's a very challenging time for workers. They crave connection. And they're trying to connect through so many different ways. and there is such an information overload going on. So with Zoom AI companion now,

that a lot of your routine tasks can be now delegated to Zoom AI companion. It is there as your assistant. So your meetings can be summarized, your chats can be summarized, you can create whiteboards, you can also look at your phone calls, you can extract, like prioritize them, information from them and you can bring it all together. So things which used to take you hours to prepare.

I mean, an example is if you're preparing for a high stakes meeting, really like all of us have been there trying to traverse the multiple sources of information and grabbing that with Zoom AI companion, you will be able to do it literally in minutes. And think about that, like, you know, being able to pull all of your data across channels together into creating useful outcomes for you. It could be preparing for a meeting.

It could be about writing for an executive roof. And it could be really helping you focus on the task at hand by doing things like, you know, we've talked about note taking summarization, composition, and so on. You know, Smitter, I'm curious, how long, I'm sure, you know, internally you all have been using, you know, these new features for quite some time. How long have you all been using these new Zoom workplace AI features? Oh, absolutely. So, you know, we launched Zoom AI companion in September of last year.

So we actually already have over half a million customers using them. But internally, we started the development before that. And within Zoom, we docked our features. We try them out ourselves. But we have been using these features ourselves for, I would say, like, you know, maybe like early to mid-last year, we have been working on these features. we have been using them. And now, of course, like, you know, we are using all of these across Zoom.

So I'm curious for you, you know, someone that's been working as we talked about earlier in the show, you know, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, et cetera. So all of these new AI powered features that the rest of the world is just getting access to now, you know, in this unified workplace kind of environment. What is the one feature that you have personally benefited from the most, that now the rest of us are all just now getting access to. I mean, I feel like, well, you all have had access, but we make sure you have control so you turn it on.

But the feature, which I would say is if you are not using a meeting summarization feature, the note taking and next steps, you are missing out. The quality is amazing. It really saves up time. I can tell you, like, I talk to people. I mean, we would talk to like, you know, people I'm assessing or,

interviewing and then after that, you know, I just send it to the person who asked me to have the conversations to say, here are the notes. It would take me so much time to do that before. So please, I would say, turn it on, try it out and see what it does for you. You will be amazed at the quality of the results and how useful it is. I've had customers come and give me a hug, literally, Jordan, and say, Smita, thank you. You have made all of us so much more productive. A consulting company has come and said that all of my concertals are using it and they're really, they can focus on the meeting now. What would you say, right?

Because there's no end-all be-all. It's not like, you know, you release Zoom Workplace and all these new AI features and you call it a day, right? The work continues. So specifically when it comes to real-time collaboration and using generative AI in that process, what are maybe next steps as we look in the, you know, coming months, coming quarters, coming years, how might we expect, whether it's, you know, Zoom, I'm sure there's things you can't talk about, but in general, with someone as much industry

experiences you, what are the next steps for, you know, improved real-time collaboration with AI? Kind of what's next? Yeah, I feel like, I think the possibilities are so amazing right now. And I feel like you will see that there's so much attention. It's actually a very exciting time. And the speed of progression on how these capabilities evolve is also going to be incredible. So what we should continue to see is rapid evolution, rapid deployment. People have to be comfortable with the security aspects of it.

And I think the challenge is people have to cut through the hype. and they have to really figure out what is real, is my data being used in a way that I'm comfortable with, we don't use any data for training, they also have to look at the cost, we provide high quality, very easy to use with no additional cost. So I feel like what we will see is really a boost of productivity, but you also asked about where it will go.

I think generative AI, digital assistant, Zoom AI companion will continue to connect more and more of our data in ways that will make us more productive. So as teams, we will be able to do a lot more. And we are talking right now about a lot of the content, which we are talking about text and speech and discussions, but also things like creating a small reel, which has highlights of your meeting.

How powerful will that be? We have smart chapters already, right? Like, you know, think about how it can really come together across all of the different areas which is called multimodal. It can take your audio, it can take your video, it can take your text,

and it can really make you more productive. I personally am even really excited about, you know, like the work we'd be doing with Apple and, you know, immersive reality or augmented reality is going to be an exciting time. My advice to readers, to listeners would be that

you must, you must start using features and trying them out. And you must make sure that, you know, you're looking at the aspects, all aspects, which I'm sure you are security, responsibility, cost, and usability in order to get started on your journey. It's a very exciting one. So I'm glad you brought up all the data in privacy.

So that's a brillia on that one. So we got that out of the way, right? But maybe as we wrap up, I have one other question. Because I think in my mind, I've like probably, you know, countless millions of other people that use Zoom on a daily basis, I've always thought of Zoom as a meeting tool. But it seems like a lot of these new AI features, this new Zoom workplace that was just announced, you know, like this week, right, is Zoom taking on more of being a content production tool, a productivity software suite versus just a meeting platform?

Is that kind of happening? Absolutely. So really Zoom workplace is about the total employee experience. It's about communications, meetings, chat, phone, email. It's about productivity. It's about engagement. How do we stay connected with each other within a company? And then it's also about making sure our in office experiences are great. So it is the total employee experience, which we are so excited. You know, we have been on a mission to build this out, basically. on the interest and demand from our customers, but now Zoom Workplace brings it all together, along with the power of Generative AI with Zoom AI companion. All right. I love it. Just some fantastic insights from an industry expert. Breaking news, as always, here on the Everyday AI show.

Smita, thank you so much for joining the show. We appreciate your insights. Thank you so much. Pleasure to be here, Jordan. All right. As a reminder, that was a lot. A lot of feature. a lot of things that we maybe didn't even have time to talk to.

It'll all be in the newsletter. So if you haven't already, make sure you go to your EverydayAI.com, sign it for that free daily newsletter. If this episode is helpful, please consider sharing it with your friends, your network. Hey, if you need another content production tool, productivity tool,

it might be that thing that you're using literally every single day for meetings alone. Thanks for joining us for this episode of Everyday AI. As always, check our newsletter for your Daily News. And we hope to see you back tomorrow and every day for more, Day AI. Thanks y'all. Meet Firefly AI Assistant. Now live in Adobe Firefly, the Allman One Creative AI Studio. Just describe what you want to create in your own words and the assistant

handles the rest, orchestrating multi-step workflows across Adobe Creative Cloud apps, including Photoshop, Premiere Express, and more in one conversational interface. You direct the outcome while the assistant accelerates execution. Stand control with the ability to step in and refine at any time. See it today at firefly.adobie.com. And that's a wrap for today's edition of Everyday AI. Thanks for joining us. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a rating. It helps keep us going.

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