The Zoom AI Companion has received a major update to its settings, making this powerful tool even easier to use in your meetings. Now, anyone can enable it on the fly, eliminating the need for a complex, pre-meeting setup. This is a game-changer for streamlining your workflow and, most importantly, for protecting Notre Dame's data.
The Zoom AI Companion is approved for use with internal and sensitive data, and it is covered by a comprehensive enterprise agreement that keeps our information secure. If you are looking for a transcription service for your meetings, the Zoom AI Companion should be your first and only choice.
Your Virtual Assistant: What Zoom AI Companion Can Do
The Zoom AI Companion is like having a virtual assistant in your meetings. It uses artificial intelligence to provide various features and assistance to make your meetings smoother and more productive.
It's important to note that the Host/Co-Host has the ability to turn this service on or off for a specific meeting. If a host has it turned off, none of the attendees will be able to use it.
Unlike unapproved services, Zoom AI Companion does not send bots into meetings as attendees. Instead, the meeting host decides which AI features are enabled and then chooses who to share those resources with.
Key Features & Benefits:
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Automated Transcriptions: The AI companion can transcribe spoken words into text in real-time, making it easier to follow along and reference important points later.
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Meeting Summaries: After the meeting, the AI companion can generate summaries highlighting key discussion points, action items, and decisions made during the call.
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Real-time Insights: The AI companion can analyze meeting dynamics, such as participation levels and speaking time, providing insights to improve future meetings.
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AI Companion Questions: Participants can quickly get clarity on what they missed during a meeting without interrupting it.
In summary, Zoom's AI companion is a valuable addition to your video conferencing toolkit, offering a range of features to streamline your meetings and enhance collaboration.
Protecting Your Data: The Risk of Rogue Services
The new ease of use with the Zoom AI Companion is a key step in helping us avoid unapproved third-party AI meeting services such as Otter.ai, Fireflies.ai, Fathom.ai, Read.ai, and similar services. These "rogue" transcription services pose a serious security risk to our community.
You may have seen these bots join meetings, often sending distracting messages to ask for permissions. However, the primary concern with these tools is what happens behind the scenes. These companies do not have an enterprise agreement with Notre Dame, which means we have no control over how they handle our meeting data. This creates an exposure risk where private conversations may be stored in insecure locations.
You would not allow a stranger to sit in on a private conversation; the presence of these tools represents a comparable situation.
Taking Action
We invite you to start using the Zoom AI Companion today to create comprehensive meeting notes and stay focused on the conversation.
While the Zoom AI Companion offers a secure solution, we must remain mindful of transcription and recording when having any kind of highly private discussions. When discussing highly sensitive subjects, turning off both recording and the AI Companion may be necessary.
It is our strong recommendation that NO third-party transcription bots should ever be allowed into any meetings. If a host notices one of these bots, please remove it immediately.
If you have previously signed up for Otter.ai or other third-party tools, please stop using them immediately and delete any records they have stored.
As the University continues to work towards better information security, many of these third-party AI bots will be unable to join Notre Dame hosted Zoom meetings in the future. Please keep an eye out for updates on that effort.
Learn More:
What is Otter.ai and how can I prevent it from joining my Zoom meeting?
Definition and Classifications of University Data