Zoom’s AI Companion 3.0 introduces autonomous, agentic features like meeting-skipping suggestions, advanced note-taking, and live translation, showcasing AI’s growing role in workplace productivity. (Source: Image by RR)

AI Companion 3.0 Will Let Users Skip Meetings and Block Focus Time

Zoom announced on Wednesday a major upgrade to its AI Companion, now version 3.0, positioning the video conferencing giant squarely in the agentic AI space. Scheduled for release in November, AI Companion 3.0 is designed to autonomously handle tasks and streamline workloads for users, reflecting the growing trend toward agent-driven productivity tools.

The standout feature, “free up my time,” uses AI to analyze calendars and suggest skipping certain meetings, marking invitees as optional, or blocking off focus periods. While the AI offers recommendations, users retain final approval before any changes occur. This move, according to a story in cnet.com, reflects a broader industry shift where businesses view AI agents as administrative aides—or, in some cases, potential replacements for lower-level roles.

Other updates include expanded note-taking capabilities that build upon manually typed notes, a feature to convert meeting slides into short video clips, new avatars for camera-free meetings, and live translation to improve communication between speakers of different languages. Zoom will also let businesses create custom AI agents for $12 per month, accompanied by a redesigned Zoom Workplace home screen for improved navigation.

Agentic AI, which builds on large language models and advanced reasoning to act independently, has quickly become a dominant trend. Reports suggest a third of organic search traffic now comes from AI agents. Zoom’s latest upgrade underlines how deeply agentic AI is reshaping workflows, even as experts caution that AI alone cannot fully replace human employees.

read more at cnet.com