Zoom Invests in and Partners With Anthropic to Improve Its AI Functionality

Zoom has become the latest tech company riding this year’s wave of artificial intelligence (AI) integrations.

The video conferencing platform announced in a Tuesday (May 16) press release that it has teamed with — and is investing in — AI firm Anthropic.

The collaboration will integrate Anthropic’s AI assistant, Claude, with Zoom’s platform, beginning with Zoom Contact Center.

“With Claude guiding agents toward trustworthy resolutions and powering self-service for end-users, companies will be able to take customer relationships to another level,” said Smita Hashim, chief product officer for Zoom, in the release.

Working with Anthropic, Hashim said, furthers the company’s goal of a “federated” approach to AI while also “advancing leading-edge companies like Anthropic and helping to drive innovation in the Zoom ecosystem and beyond.”

“As the next step in evolving the Zoom Contact Center portfolio, (Zoom Virtual Agent, Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Workforce Management), Zoom plans to incorporate Anthropic AI throughout its suite, improving end-user outcomes and enabling superior agent experiences,” the news release said.

Zoom said in the release it eventually plans to incorporate Anthropic AI throughout its suite, including products like Team Chat, Meetings, Phone, Whiteboard and Zoom IQ.

Last year, Zoom debuted Zoom Virtual Agent, an intelligent conversational AI and chatbot tool that employs natural language processing and machine learning to understand and solve customer issues.

The company did not reveal the amount of its investment in Anthropic, which is backed by Google to the tune of $300 million.

Zoom’s announcement came amid a flurry of AI-related news Tuesday, with fraud prevention firm ComplyAdvantage launching an AI tool and the New York Times digging into Microsoft’s claims that it had made a breakthrough in the realm of “artificial general intelligence.”

Perhaps the biggest news is OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s testimony before a U.S. Senate subcommittee, in which he warned: “I think if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong.”

Altman’s testimony happened “as regulators and governments around the world step up their examination of AI in a race to mitigate fears about its transformative powers, which have spread in step with the future-fit technology’s ongoing integration into the broader business landscape.”