Is there an AI for zoom?

What is Zoom AI Companion, and why it is now just Zoom AI

Zoom AI Companion is the AI built into Zoom, and since Zoom retired the name in mid-2026 it is simply called Zoom AI. The features stayed: a meeting summary with decisions and action items, in-meeting questions that answer what was said so far, chapters and highlights on cloud recordings, translated captions, and personal AI notes called My Notes. It runs on Zoom's own models plus models from outside AI labs, picked per task.

The other name you now see next to it, ZoomMate, is not the rename. It is a separate paid tier that searches across your meetings, chats and connected apps and then acts: it drafts documents and slides, runs workflows and builds agents. For notes in Zoom meetings you do not need it.

The Zoom AI notetaker: a summary for the host, My Notes for everyone else

Zoom's AI notetaker is two features. The meeting summary belongs to the host: they switch it on, an AI icon lights up in the top-right corner for everyone, and the summary goes out after the call. As a participant you can only click that icon to ask the host to start it, or to stop it.

My Notes is the one you control. It writes your own notes and transcript in any Zoom meeting, including ones you do not host, and it also works in Teams and Google Meet calls and in person, from your computer's microphone and system audio. Inside Zoom, everyone sees a banner and a pencil icon next to your name, and the host can stop it. Outside Zoom nothing tells the others, so you have to.

How to turn off AI Companion in Zoom, or turn it on

To turn off AI Companion in Zoom, sign in to the Zoom web portal, open Settings, click the Zoom AI tab (older guides call it the AI Companion tab) and switch off Meeting summary and Meeting questions. The same toggles turn them on. A greyed-out toggle means your admin locked it at the account or group level, and only they can change it.

In a meeting that is already running, the host can stop the summary and the questions from the AI icon at the top right, and delete what was generated so far. A participant cannot switch off the host's AI, only send the host a request to do it.

Zoom AI summary: where it lands and what it gets wrong

A Zoom AI summary is built after the meeting ends from what was said, the in-meeting chat and the text on shared screens: key points, decisions and action items. It arrives by email, and the host can share it with invitees or turn it into an editable doc. Cloud recordings also get chapters and highlights, so you can jump to the part that matters instead of rewatching the hour.

Treat it as a draft. Like every summary built from speech, it hands a point to the wrong person when people talk over each other and stumbles on names and jargon. If your admin switches off transcript retention for privacy, Zoom still writes the summary but keeps no transcript, so it cannot be regenerated later with a different template.

zoom: quick answers

Is Zoom AI Companion free?

Partly. The free Basic plan gets meeting summaries and in-meeting questions for 3 hosted meetings a month each, 3 uses of My Notes and 20 AI queries, inside its 40-minute meeting limit. Pro, at $16.99 a month or $14.16 billed annually, makes all of it unlimited at no extra cost.

What is ZoomMate?

ZoomMate is Zoom's paid agentic tier, sold on top of the built-in AI. It costs $20 per user a month, or $16.67 billed annually, with 2,200 AI credits a month, and adds deep research, custom agents, document and slide generation and workflows that reach into apps outside Zoom. Meeting notes and summaries do not need it, because a paid Zoom plan already includes them.

Does Zoom AI do transcription?

Yes. A paid plan can keep a full meeting transcript next to the summary when the host and admin allow it, and cloud recordings on Pro and up come with a transcript too. My Notes gives you your own transcript as a participant, also in Teams, Google Meet and in-person conversations. For transcription beyond Zoom, see AI that transcribes meetings.

Do you need a separate AI note taker for Zoom?

Usually not, if you pay for Zoom: the built-in notes are unlimited and no bot joins. A separate one makes sense on the free plan past 3 meetings a month, or when you want one searchable archive across Zoom and every other meeting app. The separate tools above either join the call as a bot or record from your computer; the whole field is in AI that takes meeting notes.

Is Zoom AI Companion private?

Zoom says it does not use your audio, video, chat, screen shares or transcripts to train its own or outside AI models, and the outside model providers it uses do not retain your content, apart from trust and safety checks. Summaries and transcripts stay in your Zoom account under your retention settings, and admins can switch transcript retention off. The bigger privacy question is usually the people in the call: tell them when AI is listening.