How to Use Zoom AI Companion: Quick Setup Guide, Key Features & Fixes

Zoom has rapidly evolved from a video meeting platform into an all-in-one workspace that streamlines team and customer communication. At the heart of this transformation is Zoom AI Companion, an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant designed to simplify routine tasks and maximize productivity. Understanding how to use Zoom AI Companion can significantly elevate your workflow and collaborate seamlessly.

A 2024 survey by Zoom showed 35% of business leaders spend three or more hours a day on in-person meetings and email, which could otherwise be allocated to high-value work. That’s where AI Companion comes in, allowing you to automate repetitive tasks so you can focus on tasks that have a greater impact. In this article, you’ll discover exactly how to use AI Companion in Zoom to reclaim your day and improve team efficiency.

What is Zoom AI Companion? 

Zoom AI Companion is an advanced, generative AI assistant built within the Zoom Workplace platform. This is part of a growing trend among virtual meeting platforms expanding into all-in-one productivity hubs. If you’re wondering how to use Zoom AI Companion effectively, it starts with knowing how it integrates across meetings, chat, email, tasks, and document collaboration.

By simply asking AI Companion, you can quickly generate meeting summaries, draft professional emails, and prioritize your most critical tasks. Having personally tested AI Companion, I like how it adapts to your meeting contexts and proactively suggests useful prompts, whether you’re in a meeting, chatting, or working within Zoom Docs. 

Beyond basic assistance, Zoom AI Companion helps capture missed details during meetings, respond to emails faster, and even offer suggestions for completing tasks. It pulls context from your Zoom activities, connected third-party apps, and even taps into Perplexity, an AI search engine, to deliver accurate and relevant responses. 

All of these happen with security and privacy at the forefront, giving you the confidence to rely on AI Companion without compromising control or trust. For instance, Zoom offers admin controls at three levels — account, user, and group — allowing you to select which AI capabilities to enable across the platform. Video participants are also notified about which AI Companion features are activated during a meeting.

Who has access to Zoom AI Companion?

Zoom AI Companion is available at no additional cost across Zoom Workplace plans, including Workplace Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions. If you’re on a free plan (Basic) and interested in utilizing AI Companion for your daily workflow, you may consider upgrading to any paid plan, especially as features like AI assistants are becoming standard across leading Zoom alternatives.

Note that AI Companion may not be available for certain industry verticals and regional customers. For more information, consult the Zoom AI Companion Security and Privacy Whitepaper.

How to enable Zoom AI Companion in your account

If you’re searching for how to enable Zoom AI Companion, it starts with your admin activating the feature in Zoom’s account settings, followed by updating your Zoom app to the latest version. This ensures you unlock the full capabilities of AI Companion and important security fixes to keep your workspace running smoothly.  

1. Check with your administrator first. AI Companion features are turned off by default, so an account admin needs to enable them at the account or group level. If you’re in a Zoom meeting and spot the AI Companion icon in your toolbar, click it to request access. Zoom will then prompt your admin to turn on the feature.

2. Log in and update your Zoom app. If you’re unsure how to turn on Zoom AI Companion, open your Zoom desktop client, make sure you’re signed in, and confirm that your app is updated.
3. Visit your account settings in the Zoom web portal. In the left-hand menu, click Settings and navigate to the AI Companion tab. From there, you can turn individual features on or off (if user-level settings are allowed by your admin).
4. Start exploring AI Companion. You’ll find the AI Companion icon ✦ throughout Zoom, including in your Meetings toolbar, Team Chat, Zoom Mail, and Zoom Docs. Once enabled, you can start using AI Companion as your meeting assistant, writing helper, and productivity tool.

Key features of Zoom AI Companion & how to use them

Zoom AI Companion offers a range of productivity features built into its meetings, team chat, mail, and docs. From meeting summaries to email drafting, here’s how to use AI Companion in Zoom to work faster and communicate more effectively.

Meeting Summary

This feature automatically captures and summarizes key discussion points and action items from your Zoom meetings. Once enabled, it allows hosts to generate summaries that can be shared via email, continuous meeting chat, or accessed in the Zoom web portal. This tool helps reduce manual note-taking and ensures that all participants stay aligned, even if they miss the call.

Team chat thread summary

Thread summaries help users quickly catch up on long or active chat threads by generating concise summaries of conversations. Instead of scrolling through dozens of messages, you can use AI Companion to instantly surface key points, decisions, and next steps. This is especially useful for busy teams or users returning to a chat after being away, ensuring you stay informed without wasting time. 

Ask AI Companion

This powerful feature built into Zoom lets you ask general knowledge questions or context-specific prompts during your workday. Whether you’re trying to understand a term mentioned in a meeting or want quick facts like “What languages are spoken in Switzerland?”, you can get instant, sourced answers directly in Zoom. 

AI Companion makes it easy to clarify unfamiliar topics or gather background information without leaving the platform. It pulls data  from trusted sources like Perplexity to generate responses with citations, helping you verify accuracy while staying focused.

Content generation

Content generation with AI Companion lets you draft meeting agendas, project briefs, and professional emails. In Zoom Docs, AI Companion can generate content based on your prompts or revise existing transcripts into polished documents. If you’re using Zoom Mail, simply ask it to “make the message longer” or “change the tone to friendly,” and it will instantly rewrite your email, saving you time and effort.

AI Studio

Instead of relying on general-purpose AI, AI Studio lets you create assistants that reflect your company’s vocabulary, processes, and priorities, making automation more effective and personalized. This is helpful for teams in sales, support, and HR needing support for summarizing customer interactions, generating ticket responses, or powering internal knowledge bots. 

How to manage Zoom AI privacy settings & customization

Zoom gives you full control over how AI Companion handles your data through its built-in privacy and customization settings. By default, Zoom AI Companion does not use your audio, video, chat, screen share, or other content to train Zoom’s or third-party AI models. 

Admins can choose which AI features are available, who can access them, and how summaries and recordings are shared. This privacy-first approach is backed by Zoom’s federated AI model, which allows organizations to benefit from AI without compromising sensitive information.

You can also customize how data is retained or shared, including who sees AI-generated summaries and when transcripts are auto-deleted. For more detailed preferences, admins can use Zoom AI Studio to add approved knowledge sources, set up custom vocabularies, and define which data AI Companion can access.

Fixes for common Zoom AI Companion issues

While Zoom AI Companion is designed to work seamlessly across its platform, you may occasionally run into setup hurdles, especially if it’s your first time. The good news is that most issues are quick to resolve with a few simple checks. Below are some practical fixes to help you get AI Companion up and running smoothly so you can take full advantage of its productivity features.

1. AI Companion features are missing or not showing

Fix: Make sure you’re on a supported paid plan (Pro, Business, or Enterprise) and that your Zoom desktop client is updated to version 5.16.0 or later. If you still don’t see the diamond icon, check with your admin to confirm the feature is enabled at the account or group level.

2. Meeting summaries are not being generated

Fix: Even if Meeting Summary is turned on in the admin settings, hosts must manually start it (unless auto-start is enabled). During the meeting, click the AI Companion icon in the toolbar and select Start Summary. Also, ensure that all participants are signed in to their Zoom accounts to receive summaries post-meeting.

3. AI Companion says it’s enabled but doesn’t respond

Fix: This is often due to a sync delay or permission conflict. Try signing out and back into the Zoom client, then verify that the correct user permissions and data sharing settings are applied. If you’re still having issues, clear your Zoom app cache or reinstall the application.

4. Participants can’t use AI companion features

Fix: Some AI Companion features are restricted to meeting hosts or require admin permission. If you’re a participant and unable to use a feature like “Ask AI Companion,” you can request the host to enable it during the meeting by clicking the diamond icon ✦  and selecting Request to Enable.

Start with Zoom AI Companion today

To answer the question, what does Zoom AI Companion do? It simplifies your day by turning conversations, messages, and documents into actionable, AI-assisted outcomes, all within Zoom Workplace. With just a few setup steps, you can start using AI to summarize conversations, draft emails, generate documents, and get quick answers, all within the Zoom Workplace platform you already use. 

Whether you’re looking to save time, improve collaboration, or reduce mental load, Zoom AI Companion is ready to help, similar to how other AI virtual assistants are being integrated into modern productivity tools. Start exploring its features today and see how much more you can get done.

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