Zoom AI Companion

About

This page outlines which AI Companion features are available, how to enable them, and key information about privacy, host responsibilities, and participant responsibilities.

Before enabling Zoom AI Companion features, a Privacy Impact Assessment and AI Assessment were completed in consultation with the Office of the General Counsel and Board Secretariat, as well as the Chief Information Security Officer.

Avoid using unapproved AI tools and third-party bots in Zoom. Zoom meetings may include sensitive information, and third-party tools may lack proper security controls or use your data to train models. We encourage you to use Zoom’s AI Companion instead, which has been approved for use at TMU. That being said, it’s still important to consider privacy when using Zoom AI Companion and the responsible use of generative AI.

Features

There are four main features enabled for the TMU community: 

• Meeting Summary: Generate a summary and next steps of what was discussed in a meeting. Meetings summaries are emailed to the host shortly after the meeting ends.
• Smart Recording: Consume recordings faster through highlights, smart chapters, summaries, and next steps; enhanced with conversation analytics, topic tracking indicators, and playlists.
• In-Meeting Questions: Quickly catch up and get clarity on what was missed during a meeting without interrupting it through text based prompts in the AI Companion sidebar. For example, “catch me up”, “was my name mentioned?”, and “what are the action items?”
• Whiteboards: Generate content for your whiteboards (which you can save for later reference and collaborate on with others), such as shapes, diagrams, text, and images.

How to enable

The AI Companion is disabled by default. Licensed TMU Zoom users may choose to enable the AI Companion under their individual account settings. 

Only the meeting host can enable the AI Companion during a meeting and is the only one who can view and edit the Meeting Summary before sharing it with attendees.

1. Navigate to your Zoom account settings “AI Companion” tab. (external link) 
2. Select the features you want to enable.
3. Schedule a meeting as you normally would.
4. The AI Companion button will appear in the Zoom toolbar. You may turn on features individually by selecting each or selecting Turn on all.

Host responsibilities

Notice of use

Before or at the meeting's start, the host should ask attendees if they want to use the AI Companion. If using the AI Companion for online classes, tell students about it beforehand, such as in the course syllabus. 

Zoom will automatically tell attendees when the AI Companion is active. 

A meeting host can toggle the AI Companion on or off as needed during the meeting.

Before sharing a meeting summary

AI can create wrong or misleading meeting summaries. Hosts should review and edit the summary for accuracy and delete any private or sensitive details.

Retention period

TMU Zoom stores cloud recordings for 180 days and automatic meeting summaries for 30 days. If you need to keep them longer, download and save them to your TMU Google Drive.

Participant responsibilities

• Do not discuss sensitive information while the AI Companion is enabled.
• Your participation in meetings may be summarized using the Zoom AI Companion, and may be made available to the class and other TMU staff. 
• AI can create wrong or misleading meeting summaries. You should always review the information for accuracy.
• Do not share meeting summaries without the permission of the host, instructor, or staff member.

Privacy 

Zoom does not use any customer audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments or other communications-like content (such as poll results, whiteboard and reactions) to train Zoom’s or its third-party AI models.

Zoom AI Companion is not approved for meetings where confidential or sensitive topics or data may be discussed, such as protected health information, social insurance numbers, student numbers, birthdates, credit card data, etc. For guidance on determining whether it is appropriate to use Zoom AI companion, please refer to the Information Classification table.

During meetings where most of the meeting is considered “low” sensitivity or public, Zoom AI Companion can be enabled. When discussing more sensitive topics, disable the Zoom AI Companion. This can be toggled on or off during the course of the meeting.

Privacy concerns should be reported to the Privacy Office. For more information, please refer to the University Privacy and Access to Information Policy and report any concerns or incidents through the Privacy Incident Management Process.

Related Zoom resources

Zoom general information
Zoom is a live streaming and web conferencing tool for online meetings & seminars in real-time.

Other helpful teaching resources