Zoom CEO Eric Yuan says AI will shorten our workweek (techcrunch.com)

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said the company is doubling down on AI — “AI, AI, and AI” — and showcased how its emerging features, notably a “digital twin” avatar that can speak and act for you, are already being used (Yuan even used one on an investor earnings call). He painted a near-term future where autonomous AI companions handle routine aspects of work: negotiating preliminary contract terms via digital twins, triaging and drafting replies to email, and taking over lengthy, low-value meeting time. Yuan framed these capabilities as productivity multipliers that could realistically shrink the standard workweek to three or four days within about five years. The significance for AI/ML is twofold: operationally, Zoom’s push underscores a mainstream transition from assistive tools to semi-autonomous agents that require advances in natural language understanding, long-horizon planning, speech synthesis, and multi-agent coordination; strategically, it signals major enterprise demand for agent reliability, privacy safeguards, explainability, and policy controls. If digital twins become widespread, organizations will need robust authentication, audit logs, and governance to trust delegated decisions. Zoom’s emphasis — multi-hour strategy sessions and product roadmaps centered on autonomous assistants — indicates accelerating investment in the technical and regulatory infrastructure that will determine whether these productivity gains are real, safe, and equitable.