Nextcloud has announced Hub 5, the collaboration platform of choice for organizations dealing with sensitive data. The Hub 5 release, available immediately, further integrates secure file exchange, video conferencing, groupware and office document editing around the concept of the digital workspace while adding flexible and privacy-protecting AI capabilities.

New and improved AI features include:
• Smart Inbox in Mail and Related Resources
• Face and object recognition in Nextcloud Photos
• Background images in addition to background blurring in Nextcloud Talk
• Image generation using Stable Diffusion
• Translation with Nextcloud Translate, integrated in Nextcloud Talk and Nextcloud
Text to translate your chat messages and text documents
• Nextcloud Dictation for voice recognition integrated across Nextcloud Hub
• Call transcripts of recorded video calls

These integrations are running entirely on the Nextcloud server without any data leakage to third parties. They are completely optional and can be installed from the Nextcloud App Store with one click by the administrator of the Nextcloud server. Nextcloud continues to develop on-premises alternatives for other AI features, with further updates expected later this year.

For those looking to use external, online AI services, this release also offers optional translation through Deepl and ChatGPT, DALL-E for image generation and ChatGPT for text generation. These features can be installed from the App Store. Hub 5 additionally provides an app that integrates GPTZero, an online service designed to detect AI generated texts.

To super-charge collaboration, this release allows administrators to assign a Groupfolder to a Circle, a custom group which can be managed by employees themselves. To make projects easier to access by employees, Groupfolders can now be found in the sidebar in Files and in the mobile applications. The Desktop client introduces fully automated file locking to ensure team members don’t locally edit files simultaneously. Nextcloud Talk introduces breakout-rooms for brainstorming sessions or class room use, as well as a beta of an upcoming Talk Desktop Client for Windows, Mac and Linux.