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Zoom AI Companion is enabled and approved for UofI users as of August 5, 2024. This article covers the features of Zoom AI Companion and usage concerns.
Zoom AI Companion has been reviewed for security and compliance and is approved for low risk university use. It is the responsibility of the meeting host to discuss with meeting attendees whether to enable or disable Zoom AI Companion. At no time should meetings directly discussing high risk topics or data, like Social Security Numbers, Credit Card numbers, or Personal Health Information be recorded to Zoom or have the AI Companion enabled. If you want more information about Zoom's security and privacy practices, the Zoom AI Companion Security and Privacy Whitepaper provides details.
No other AI meeting assistants or add-ons have been approved and all should be disabled. At this time, OIT does not intend to make AI available in Microsoft Teams due to significant monetary costs and potential security risks.
- Participants in a meeting where AI Companion is turned on will get a notification based on which features are enabled. For example, "This meeting is being transcribed for AI Companion." or "This meeting is being recorded. It's also being transcribed for AI Companion." Meeting participants can click the flashing star at the top of the screen to find out more about which features have been enabled. Participants can also request that the host turn AI Companion on/off.
- Use caution when considering using Zoom AI Companion for meetings that may include sensitive data.
- Use caution with sharing meeting summaries and smart recordings so that they are only shared with people who should have access to the content.
- It is your responsibility to review the summaries and recordings that AI Companion generates, and you can correct errors before sharing them with others.
- Note that the current capabilities of AI Companion are limited. If several meeting participants are connected through one computer in a conference room, AI Companion will not differentiate between several participants in the room. Those features are coming but not yet available.
All Zoom meetings currently default to enhanced encryption, but you can change the setting to End-to-end encryption when scheduling the meeting. Consider using end-to-end encryption (E2EE) when you want additional protection for Zoom meetings that include sensitive information. Keep in mind that E2EE will automatically disable several features in Zoom including AI Companion, Breakout rooms, and Cloud recording. 
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Zoom AI Companion is turned off by default, but U of I users can individually enable the features. To enable the Zoom AI Companion features, login to Zoom at https://zoom.uidaho.edu/ and click the Settings menu in the left panel. Then click on the AI Companion tab at the top. You can click the toggle next to each feature to turn it on.
In the meeting control toolbar, click AI Companion. From this menu, you can turn on/off all features, start/stop summary, and ask meeting questions. Note that if the host does have AI Companion enabled for their meetings, any meeting participants can request that it be started for the current meeting. 
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A brief training will be available in the Zoom Learning Center soon that covers all the key features of Zoom AI Companion so that you can see it in action before using. To access the Zoom Learning Center, SIGN IN to your account at https://zoom.uidaho.edu/ and click on the blue Zoom Learning Center link at the bottom left. You can explore the Zoom Learning Center for other Zoom trainings as well.
Note that not all AI Companion features are available to UofI users. See below for the features that are available.
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There are four main AI Companion features that will work with your UofI Zoom account: Meeting Summary, Meeting Questions, Smart Recording, and Whiteboard Content Generation. Each of these features has multiple components.
There are multiple settings for Meeting Summary. Summaries are controlled by the meeting host. Consider if you want to start the meeting summary automatically or share the summary with meeting attendees.
For more information about using the Meeting Summary feature, see this article. 
Preset questions are provided such as "Catch me up", "Was my name mentioned?, and "What are the action items?, but you can also ask custom questions. There are multiple settings for the Meeting Questions. Consider whether you want AI Companion to start automatically and who can ask questions. For more information about using the Meeting Questions feature, see this article. 
There are multiple features that can be enabled within the Smart Recording settings. For more information on these features, see this article.
If you're a Zoom Clips user, this feature can create titles, descriptions, and tags for your Clips based on the audio transcript data.
Whiteboard content can be generated with Zoom AI Companion for sticky notes, tables, text, and mindmaps. To learn more about how to use these features, see this article. 
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