Meta Platforms has joined forces with Zoom on a standalone app for Meta Quest headsets that lets you initiate or take video calls appearing as a virtual avatar. Unlike the Quest app launched by Zoom in 2023, the new app does not restrict use to Meta’s Horizon Workrooms nor require a paid Zoom subscription to facilitate meetings. Meta says that now “any free or paid Zoom license” can set up meetings or simply participate in them using Meta Quest 3, Quest 3S, Quest Pro, and Quest 2 headsets. Available now at the Meta Horizon Store, the Zoom app for Meta Quest lets you join a meeting with total VR immersion or see your surroundings in an augmented reality experience using Passthrough mode.

“Meta Quest participants will show up on a Zoom meeting as an avatar and will see participants joining with video from the Zoom desktop, mobile, or web apps,” Meta explains in a blog post.

Gadgets 360 clarifies that “other users present in the meeting will see the same avatar, regardless of the device they have joined the meeting from.”

In a Meta Horizon Store listing the company says you can use the Zoom Workplace app for Quest to: schedule or join video meetings, share content during meetings, and chat with colleagues and external contacts.

“Over the past year or so, Zoom has been pushing toward its goal of having AI avatars join meetings on your behalf,” writes The Verge, noting that in 2024 the remote conferencing platform began letting Apple Vision Pro users join meetings as VR personas.

Late last year, Zoom made updates that Tech Times says allow users to create their own “‘AI deepfakes’ to appear on Zoom video conferences, allowing users to replicate their voice and train a custom LLM based on the user’s unique personality.”

Zoom introduced custom avatars in October as an add-on with the release of AI Companion 2.0 (available at no additional charge with any paid Zoom service).

Road to VR questions whether anyone will want to use the Meta avatars for work, saying that “while greatly improved over the years, they’re still just as cartoony as ever — especially in comparison to Apple’s latest Persona avatars coming to visionOS 26.”