The Zoom video-calling app has just added its own “AI Companion” assistant that integrates artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) from ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Facebook owner Meta. The tool is designed to help you catch up on meetings you missed and devise quick responses to chat messages.
Zoom’s developer says the AI Companion “empowers individuals by helping them be more productive, connect and collaborate with teammates, and improve their skills.”
For example, Zoom’s blog post explains that if you are late to a meeting, its AI Companion can summarize what happened while you were absent. It can also suggest action points and highlight topics of discussion after a meeting, as well as divide cloud recordings into more digestible chapters.
A few extra features are in the works. Later in September, the AI Companion will be able to help you write emails and summarize chat messages, while Zoom says it will suggest responses to text chats later in the fall.
Further into the future, the AI Companion will assist you in finding documents, filing support tickets, and preparing for upcoming meetings, all based on live calls or those that have happened in the past.
That all sounds interesting, but Zoom is no stranger to controversy, having been called out for its misleading end-to-end encryption claims and creepy emotion-detecting technology. For many people, the idea of integrating a generative AI tool into your sensitive calls could start ringing privacy alarm bells.
Zoom has tried to allay these concerns by saying that its AI Companion will respect your privacy. In its blog post, the company claimed that “Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications-like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models.”
However, the company faced a backlash in August 2023 following claims that the app’s terms allowed it to harvest user data and feed it into AI tools. Zoom later clarified the terms to say it didn’t use communications data to train its AI, but it still appears that the app can scoop up “service-generated data,” such as user telemetry and product usage data. Whether any of this goes towards training AI models is unclear.
The AI Companion requires a paid Zoom account and is available to premium users for no added cost. Zoom says additional features will be announced “in the coming weeks.”
The absolutely absurd idea of putting a touchscreen display on a mouse isn't exactly new. Turtle Beach already did it with its Command Series MC7, which features a 2.25-inch control screen. But apparently, even that wasn't ridiculous enough for Arctic Fox Technologies. Its new Super Mouse looks like someone took the chunky old Atari ST mouse, slapped a touchscreen and scroll wheel on it, and called it an upgrade.
The result is a rather unusual-looking mouse that is now on Kickstarter, starting at $199. And as ridiculous as it looks, some of its features are genuinely intriguing.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.