Zoom is starting to launch its AI-powered tools first announced in October. Available to Zoom Workplace subscribers, the new Zoom Docs has been engineered from the ground up for AI optimization, leveraging Zoom’s AI Companion for what the company says will result in increased productivity and collaboration. Zoom Docs users will be able to open documents from within the videoconferencing app and can use generative AI to help write and edit them. The results will be easily shareable, Zoom says of its bid to compete with biggies like Google and Microsoft in the business productivity space.

A detailed Zoom announcement describes dozens of new in-app features of its AI suite that “effortlessly transforms information from Zoom Meetings into actionable documents and knowledge bases, so teams can stay focused on meaningful work,” according to Zoom’s Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim.

The Zoom AI Companion will serve as what TechRadar calls the “backbone” of the new platform, more tightly integrating things like meeting summaries from Zoom video calls and meetings and Team Chat, to use to “create or start writing and collaborating on documents such as an action list or wrap-up report.”

“Up to a hundred users are able to collaborate on a Zoom Doc, but permissions or access can be quickly added, changed or removed where necessary,” TechRadar explains. Colleagues can respond in real time to mentions, and comments threads also provide an opportunity for feedback.

The Zoom AI Companion introduced last fall is “a generative tool built on LLM models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and the company’s own models, unveiled last fall,” reports Wired, noting “it can take a meeting transcript and organize it into templates, or make tables, checklists, and trackers to organize processes and tasks” for docs that “can then be integrated to Zoom meetings for sharing and editing.”

Keeping information “fluid and organized,” Zoom Docs can also be used to “embed content from across Zoom Workplace and third parties like Zoom Whiteboard, Google Drive, Figma, X and YouTube to make information centrally accessible,” according to the announcement.

As competition heats up in the productivity space, Wired suggests “Zoom is betting that the price will matter: Its Workplace plans include the company’s AI Companion at no extra cost (Zoom Workplace costs between $14 and $19 dollars per user per month for smaller companies),” which is less than Copilot for Microsoft 365 ($30 per user per month) and Gemini for Google Workspace (starting at $20 and $30 per user per month).