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Zoom announced that it’ll allow users to create clips featuring AI avatars of themselves to deliver messages at meetings they can’t (or don’t want to) attend.
The Big Picture: Zoom CEO Eric Yuan has dreams of people sending AI avatars to take meetings for them while they do literally anything else. The new clip feature is the first step in making that science-fiction idea a reality.
Between The Frames: Zoom wants you to BYOD (bring your own deepfake) to the next all-hands meeting.
- As part of the platform’s AI Companion add-on that launches next year, users can create lifelike avatars of themselves or choose preset avatars and voices (we’re not sure which is more unsettling).
- To build your own, you’ll need to record a video that the system will transform into a lookalike and soundalike clone.
- The avatar can then be used to record short clips (only a few minutes long, we’re assuming), which users can program by simply writing their messages.
The Future: While the AI avatars are meant to optimize meeting attendance, they also raise troubling questions about unauthorized deepfakes that could, in a way, hack companies. Zoom chief product officer Smita Hashim said the company is “handling it really carefully with advanced authentication, watermarking technology, and strict usage policies.” In the meantime, expect some meetings to get prioritized as “humans only” for the sake of security.
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