US software provider Zoom announces avatars for video clips

After the pandemic triggered a Zoom boom, the software company is trying new AI functions. From 2025, users will be able to create avatars and record videos with them.

The video conferencing specialist Zoom will let users communicate with their colleagues via digitally created avatars. The deceptively real-looking figures will initially only be used in the Zoom Clips function, in which you can record short video notes.

With the new avatars, you no longer have to record these videos yourself. Instead, it should be enough to write a text – and the software would then animate the digital copy with appropriate mouth movements and the simulated voice. The function is expected to be introduced next year.

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The program first creates a digital copy of a person based on a video that they have to record beforehand. Zoom assured that there would be security measures against misuse of the function. One concern with such software is that it can be used to create fake videos that look deceptively real.

Will users soon send digital twins into video conferences?

While the video avatars have so far been limited to clips, Zoom boss Eric Yuan also spoke in an interview with the website “The Verge” in the summer about the possibility of being able to send a digital twin in video conferences in which you are not involved in the future have to participate. Instead you could go to the beach.

Zoom's business received a strong boost during the coronavirus pandemic, in which hundreds of millions of people suddenly had to work and learn using video conferencing. Zoom is now trying to develop new sources of revenue with functions based on artificial intelligence, among other things.

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