Zoom wants your digital twin to participate in video conferences for you

Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, already sees the big picture. In the future, he says, artificial intelligence will allow you to use digital twins of yourself to participate in virtual meetings.

Like many tech giants, the videoconferencing platform has jumped on the generative AI bandwagon. Since 2023, its paying users can, for example, count on a personal assistant called Zoom IQ, capable of providing news on the status of projects, in addition to extracting information from transcribed meetings, discussions, whiteboards, emails, documents and third-party applications.

According to Eric Yuan, this is just the beginning. And his future vision depicts a world worthy of a science fiction scenario.

An LLM for each user

The leader spoke at length with journalist Nilay Patel for the podcast Decode of The Verge. It was on this occasion that he revealed his ultimate ambition: the possibility of creating his own digital twin on Zoom.

A digital twin is a virtual replica of a real physical object, process or system. This detailed representation uses real-time data to accurately reflect the state and behavior of its physical counterpart. For example, in aeronautics, aircraft manufacturers create digital twins of devices to detect potential problems. In the case of Zoom, this would be a replica of the user themselves.

Yuan goes even further. He believes that eventually it will be possible to create multiple digital twins of a single person, setting each one up to be effective in a specific area, such as sales negotiations. Depending on the meeting, the author could then send the most suitable avatar.

To power these systems, the CEO explains that each person should have their own large language model (LLM). Each model would be developed to correspond to the way of thinking and expressing itself of the human it reproduces.

A vision reminiscent of the metaverse…

Of course, there are still immense challenges ahead to achieve such a result. LLMs today require colossal computing power, in addition to having a propensity for hallucinations.

Despite everything, the boss of Zoom seems convinced and cites technologies like Meta Quest 3 and Vision Pro to support his claims. The two headsets indeed allow for much more immersive videoconferencing experiences. On Apple’s device, Zoom users can also be represented by an avatar “ authentic space » of themselves.

The concept defended by Eric Yuan is reminiscent of a certain metaverse, a virtual world in which the avatars of virtual people will interact. While it seems to have been buried by the AI ​​boom, it is still considered the next iteration of the Internet by some.

Source : The Verge