American video teleconferencing software company Zoom has planned to expand its support for automatic live transcriptions with the addition of live translation, and turn its whiteboard feature into more of a fully-featured app, among several other changes, which the company announced at its Zoomtopia conference earlier this week.

According to ANI, the automatic live transcriptions/closed captions in English were announced to be coming to free Zoom accounts in February 2021. Now Zoom has said it “plans to provide real-time transcription for (as many as 30 additional languages) by the end of next year”.

As part of that push, Zoom will also offer translation services for paid accounts, with the plan “to support real-time translation across as many as 12 languages by the end of next year”.

Zoom was not able to share details about which languages will be supported and when, but did say these improvements are a direct result of the machine learning know-how it gained by acquiring German translation company Kites.

The other major change is coming to Zoom’s whiteboard feature that lets users create and share whiteboards during meetings to doodle together while they talk, but a planned expansion launching in beta later this year will make Zoom Whiteboard available outside of meetings in Zoom apps and the web.

The basic drawing tools don’t appear to be different from what Zoom currently offers, the main change is how Zoom is treating Whiteboard as a product alongside video calls, rather than a feature that lives inside of them. Users will be able to add sticky notes, drawings, and comments on your boards and view them whenever they want.

It is also reported that early next year, the video teleconferencing company is coming to Facebook’s Horizon Workrooms. The shared VR meeting space will be able to host video meetings and connect to Zoom Whiteboard, according to Zoom.