Zoom is expanding its AI Companion beyond the meeting room and bringing it to the browser, as well as opening up core features to Basic plan holders for the first time. The AI Companion 3.0 upgrade brings a dedicated web interface, provides access to free users based on monthly limits and extends the reach of the assistant into documents, tasks and email drafting to avoid disruptions in work following the call.
What free users get with Zoom’s AI Companion features
Basic plan users can now activate the AI assistant in up to three meetings per month for free. In those sessions, Companion can provide a meeting summary, answer in-meeting questions and take structured notes without the host having to juggle several different apps.
When not on a live call, free and basic users can ask up to 20 questions through the sidebar or the new web experience in order to pull highlights, clarify decisions or surface action items. Zoom is offering a $10 add-on for more frequent use that grants broader access to AI Companion features.
A browser-first surface for AI Companion on the web
The revamped web surface offers the assistant a permanent home outside the chat, where users can look at meeting content even if Zoom is not up and running. Conversation starter prompts direct new team members — think “Recap my last team sync” to “What follow-ups are we waiting for?” — and show what the tool can do in seconds.
And, importantly, the assistant can now pull up information not just from Zoom meetings and chats but also from third-party storage tools like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. Connectors for Gmail and Microsoft’s Outlook are coming, which will allow Companion to pull in context across files and inboxes like being able to respond to questions or draft next steps with more accuracy.
From recaps to real work with Zoom’s AI Companion
AI Companion’s new daily reflection distills what transpired across meetings and threads, into a single concise digest of decisions, tasks and updates. And then it can spin those insights into follow-up tasks and draft emails, so teams close the loop faster after a call.
It’s also getting smarter about document creation. Users will write and edit docs from meeting content within the Companion interface, before throwing it over to Zoom Docs for collaboration. Finished files can be exported to Markdown, PDF, Microsoft Word, or stay in Zoom Docs and cut the unnecessary copy-paste across tools.
That means that following a 45-minute call with a customer, a salesperson can find themselves leaving the Zoom ecosystem having produced not only a quick summary of what went down but also an email recap they can send out immediately and even the first draft of a proposal or contract to close the deal.
Competing in the crowded AI workplace market today
Zoom’s move follows an emerging demand for workplace AI copilots. Microsoft’s Copilot for Microsoft 365 and Google’s Gemini for Workspace have bet big on meeting summaries, action items, and email drafting — but those features tend to live behind $20–$30 per user add-ons. Allowing free users to test out high value features, Zoom is banking a freemium runway will convert more teams to paid tiers while also warming people up to AI in the workflow.
The company is also expanding by moving beyond meetings. Earlier this year, it unveiled a cross-app notetaker that operates even in offline meetings, pointing to its approach of capturing context wherever work takes place and of competing more directly with platforms like Notion and ClickUp.
Models in use and data governance commitments
“Because of where Zoom is in the meeting, this intersects with a rich set of contextual signals about who said what when,” Lijuan Qin, head of AI product at Zoom, has been noting. Under the hood, Zoom combines its own models with top systems from OpenAI and Anthropic, choosing the model that will strike the best balance between task and cost.
As AI shifts deeper into the heart of knowledge work, trust will continue to be central. Zoom has said in the past that it does not allow customer audio, video or chat content to be used to train any third-party models without consent and offers admins granular controls over data sharing and feature access. As the assistant hooks into more external sources such as Drive and OneDrive, clear permissions and auditability will become an even bigger deal for enterprise buyers.
Why it matters for adoption of AI in the workplace
Offering a taste of truly useful AI to millions of free users is an easy growth lever, and a way to normalize AI-powered workflows where they begin: in the meeting. It also lessens friction: a web-first surface means no special install, and connectors offer the promise of richer context without the need to hunt manually.
The timing lines up with broader market trends. “We know generative AI spend will skyrocket over the next few years, analyst firms have shared their points of view around that, and organizations are prioritizing meeting productivity because that is where you will see your measurable time savings the quickest.” If those limits feel plenty generous to tantalize new users — three full-featured meetings plus 20 Q&A prompts would be free each month — the company could turn curiosity into habit, and habit into paid usage.
