Zoho launches new AI tools on Creator platform at no extra cost

Zoho has introduced ten new artificial intelligence features to its low-code application development platform, Zoho Creator, aiming to simplify and accelerate business app creation for its users.

The newly added services and functionalities reflect Zoho's stated commitment to investing only in AI capabilities that provide real-time, practical, and secure advantages to business users. The enhancements focus on reducing the time and complexity involved in building business applications, targeting both technical and non-technical users.

One of the primary updates is the integration of CoCreator, an AI-powered assistant within Zoho Creator.

CoCreator, supported by Zoho's AI assistant Zia, enables users to construct applications using voice commands, written prompts, process flowcharts, or business specification documents. Zoho has clarified that these AI features are included at no extra cost to users' existing subscriptions.

According to the company, Zia's role as an AI bridge spans the full product suite, allowing for a higher standard of contextual support, and maximising organisational workflows.

Zoho maintains full ownership of its technology stack, which it says brings a more integrated and secure experience compared to competitors.

Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho, commented on the company's approach to simplifying business app development. "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."

He added, "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 upgraded Zoho Creator platform now offers several AI-driven features. The 'Idea-to-App Generation' service leverages ZohoAI or OpenAI to help users develop full-fledged applications, complete with contextual integrations, automations, permission sets, and dashboards, simply by using text or voice input, process flow diagrams, or business requirement documents. The platform can deliver domain-specific suggestions and propose relevant fields and modules tailored for individual businesses.

Another feature, 'Component Generation Using AI', lets users enhance current applications through prompt-based form generation.

Zia, the AI assistant, detects the business context and recommends additional fields within an existing form. Zoho highlighted that this capability to proactively recommend contextual fields is missing in many comparable low-code app development tools.

The platform now supports 'Code Generation and Optimisation', enabling developers of various skill levels to use prompts for automatic generation of contextual code blocks tailored to their application structure. This function can also optimise and annotate pre-existing code for improved performance.

For handling data, Zoho Creator introduces advanced data cleansing and modelling capabilities, allowing users to quickly transform unstructured data from various file types and databases into structured applications. These AI-powered features are designed to rectify inconsistencies and bring logical order to business data.

The 'AI Skills' feature enables businesses to add specialised skills to their applications. These applications can interpret natural language instructions, analyse business context, and orchestrate chains of actions for intelligent automation of everyday processes.

Powered by Zoho's scripting language Deluge and specialised AI models, this feature is currently in Early Access and is planned to be widely available from June 2025.

Zoho Creator now also supports the deployment of custom AI models designed to work with context-specific data and requirements, including support for optical character recognition (OCR), predictive analysis, and object detection.

Zoho has stated that its approach to AI is customer-focused, guided by principles of privacy and value.

The AI models integrated into the platform are not trained on customer data and do not retain user information. Zoho also emphasised a balance between providing assistive AI technology for workers and maintaining affordability for consumers by avoiding unnecessary model complexity or additional costs.

With over 100 million users globally and a portfolio spanning more than 55 business applications, Zoho Corporation continues to expand its AI capabilities across its technology stack with these latest upgrades to Zoho Creator.