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This week’s roundup covers Zoom and OpenAI's partnership, U.K. data protection watchdog ICO probing companies using or developing generative AI tools like ChatGPT, and other news.

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Zoom partners with OpenAI

Zoom, the online meeting company, is partnering with OpenAI to enhance the AI capabilities of its meeting assistant, Zoom IQ.

Zoom IQ can do things such as summarize what transpired at meetings that employees missed, in real time, and create a whiteboard session for a meeting through text prompts, among other capabilities. A recap of meetings can be posted on Zoom Team Chat, with calls to action.

Zoom IQ can even help users compose or rephrase chat messages, suggest an agenda for a meeting based on chat messages and write emails to customers based on meeting notes.

The revamped Zoom IQ is rolling out this month to customers by invitation.

“We’re taking a federated approach to AI to leverage our proprietary AI models, those from leading AI companies such as OpenAI, and select customers’ own models,” wrote Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim in a blog.

UK to scrutinize firms using or developing generative AI

The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), an independent data protection watchdog, said it will carefully scrutinize companies that are developing or using generative AI tools to ensure they comply with privacy laws.

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT have soared in popularity as they helped people compose prose, write code, create images and the like. The ICO said data protection laws apply when “personal information that you’re processing comes from publicly accessible sources.”

The ICO said “this isn’t optional – if you’re processing personal data, it’s the law” and will “act where organizations are not following the law.”

The watchdog said companies using or developing generative AI tools must ask themselves the following questions:

SenseTime to challenge ChatGPT?

SoftBank-backed SenseTime, China’s most valuable specialist AI company, is thought to be launching a rival to ChatGPT, according to Bloomberg News.

Its stock spiked this week on speculation that it is getting ready to unveil a large-scale AI model.

“They are going to launch a large model next week” on April 10, said CMB International analyst Marley Ngan.

SenseTime, based in Shanghai and also backed by Alibaba, has trained text-to-image generative AI models and has a pre-trained large language model slated for mid-2023. However, it is under U.S. sanctions that hampers its ability to raise capital and get access to crucial American components.