Zoho unveils advanced AI for Creator, boosts privacy focus

Zoho has introduced ten new features and services to its low-code application development platform, Zoho Creator, with a focus on expanded artificial intelligence capabilities and user privacy.

The new additions include AI-enabled intelligent process automation, enhanced app building features driven by artificial intelligence, and AI-first low-code development tools. These developments are part of Zoho's approach to integrating AI solutions that deliver real-time, practical benefits for business users, while maintaining stringent data privacy standards.

With the launch of the AI assistant CoCreator, powered by Zoho's own Zia technology, Zoho Creator now enables users to build applications faster using both voice and written prompts, as well as process flows and business specification documents. The company states that these tools shorten the time it takes to bring an app from concept to deployment, with no additional fees passed on to existing subscribers.

Zoho Canada's Managing Director Chandrashekar LSP said, "Since Creator's introduction in 2006, the focus has been on simplifying and speeding up the app development process without sacrificing functionality. This enabled our users to launch millions of apps successfully. AI allows us to take it to another level, shortening the time from an idea to an app. Today's announcement raises the baseline on speed of quality app creation with deep capabilities, without adding costs."

The new features available to users include Idea-to-App Generation, which leverages ZohoAI or OpenAI to create fully-fledged applications based on a range of inputs including text, voice prompts, workflows, and system documentation like software requirement specifications. The system also offers domain-specific suggestions, relevant fields, and modules that are customised to each customer's business context.

Another update is contextual component development using AI, where forms and other app elements can be generated via prompts, and Zoho's Zia assistant can proactively recommend fields relevant to existing forms. This functionality is not present in most other low-code app tools, according to Zoho.

Developers can also prompt Zia to generate contextual code blocks tailored to their application structure or optimise previously written code for performance. Data cleansing and modelling capabilities have also been expanded, enabling transformation of unstructured data from diverse sources into structured, usable app data, with AI tools removing inconsistencies and bringing order to imported information.

The platform introduces AI Skills, a feature enabling applications to interpret natural language instructions, analyse business context, and perform sequences of actions automatically. Powered by Zoho's scripting language Deluge and specialised AI models, this feature is accessible on an early access basis and will be broadly available in June 2025. Additionally, Zoho Creator will offer support for deploying custom AI models, such as those for optical character recognition, prediction, and object detection, tailored to specific domain requirements.

A key part of Zoho's announcement centres on its approach to AI and customer privacy. Zoho states that its AI models—across contextual, assistive, and agentic domains—are not trained on consumer data and that the organisation does not retain customer information beyond what is necessary for immediate functionality.

In a statement, the company outlined its stance: "Zoho is committed to designing and incorporating artificial intelligence guided by the principles of customer privacy and value. Our generic AI models across contextual, assistive, and agentic AI, are not trained on consumer data and do not retain customer information. Zoho builds AI tools with usefulness in mind, striking a balance between providing AI technology that assists workers while right-sizing models that don't require burdening consumers with additional costs."

Zoho's suite of advanced AI features for Zoho Creator is now available for users. The enhanced automation, data preparation, and application generation tools are designed to be accessible to users of various skill levels and do not require further subscription purchases.