Zoho’s low-code development platform gets AI capabilities

Zoho says the platform’s new AI assistant, CoCreator, will facilitate faster, simpler, and more intelligent app building by using voice and written prompts, process flows, and business specification documents.

Powered by the Zia AI assistant, CoCreator drives shorter go-to-market timeframes and does not require add-ons to a customer's existing subscription. 

Zia has served as a bridge across Zoho's entire product suite, including Creator, since its launch in 2015. 

"Since we introduced Creator in 2006, our mission has been to make app development simpler and faster, without compromising on functionality," said Veerakumar Natarajan, Country Head of Zoho Kenya. 

"AI now takes us to the next level, shortening the time from an idea to an app. Today's announcement significantly raises the baseline on the speed of quality app creation with deep capabilities, without adding costs."

Among the newly-launched capabilities is an ‘Idea-to-App Generation’ feature which allows businesses to use ZohoAI or OpenAI to develop full-fledged applications. 

By using text or voice prompts, process flow diagrams, or systems documentation like software requirement specifications (SRS), Zoho says Creator will provide domain-specific suggestions, ideas for relevant fields, and modules tailored to a customer's business.

Zia also proactively suggests contextual fields within forms, Zoho said, and developers can generate and optimize code blocks contextually within apps using the assistant’s prompter.

They will also be able to annotate existing code blocks for future maintenance.

Additional enhancements include document uploads that allow extraction of relevant information into an application; voice-based app generation from mobile devices; and deploying custom AI models for deploying capabilities like OCR, prediction, and object detection.

Zoho, established in 1996, offers cheaper alternatives to cloud-based software tools made by the likes of the U.S. tech giant Microsoft.