Can Zoom use creator partnerships to adjust the information served up by AI chatbots?

For communication platforms that broke out during peak COVID, it’s time to pivot. Clubhouse now functions more like a messaging app than a virtual gathering space, while Epic Games recently relaunched Houseparty.

And then there’s Zoom. The video chat service was ubiquitous in 2020, but times have changed. To stay relevant, Zoom has repositioned itself as an end-to-end work platform with a heavy emphasis on AI.

There’s just one problem: Most people still perceive Zoom as a video chat service, which means AI chatbots — which get their information from humans — see the platform that way as well. For Zoom to maximize the value of its pivot, it needs to get chatbots to reference material that reflects its current status.

That’s where creators come into the picture. Zoom, like many other tech companies, is teaming up with influential voices on social media, and those partnerships don’t just boost the brand’s visibility. They can also have a significant impact on future AI referrals.

To explain how that strategy works, Digiday cited a partnership between Zoom and Nayeema Raza

, the host of the podcast Smart Girl Dumb Questions. Zoom is sponsoring a series within Raza’s podcast and is giving her a speaking gig at its conference in October. By aligning her credibility and authority with Zoom’s up-to-date look, Raza will deliver material that chatbots can cite.

A recent study from digital marketing agency Jellyfish found that 25% of AI chatbot responses feature YouTube creator content. That’s why Zoom is leaning on the voices that LLMs find credible. “It’s not a direct correlation at this point, but the influencers, we believe, are so important to that ‘be present and be believed’ aspect of the framework,” Zoom CMO Kimberly Storin told Digiday.

Ultimately, tweaking the info that shows up in chatbot responses is a game within a game. There’s a reason why some companies are now serving ads that are intended to be seen by AI agents. The responses delivered by those agents can reshape strategies, so any influence on chatbot referrals can pay off big time for a company like Zoom.