23.1 Overview
Zoho Creator has significantly expanded its AI capabilities under the "Zia" brand, encompassing both classical ML models and generative AI. The platform supports AI across four dimensions: accelerating development, automating data processing, providing in-platform assistance, and enabling agentic automation (AI Capabilities in Creator).
23.2 Development Acceleration (Generative AI)
Zia App Builder (Generative Application Creation)
The most transformative AI feature in Creator is the Zia App Builder, which generates entire Creator applications from natural language prompts. Two modes:
- Zoho GenAI-backed: Available on all paid plans; no additional configuration. Accepts text prompts describing the application need.
- OpenAI-backed: Requires BYOK configuration with an OpenAI API key. Supports multimodal inputs—users can upload PRDs (Product Requirements Documents), flow charts, spreadsheets, or images as context for app generation.
From a mobile device, the Zia App Builder additionally accepts voice and image inputs for prompt composition.
Access: Admin Dashboard → Microservices → + Create Solution → Applications → Create using Zia.
Zoho also operates Creator Launchpad (zoho.com/creator/launchpad/), a public-facing interface where prospective users can experience AI-driven app creation before committing to an account (Creator Launchpad).
Form Creation Using Zia
AI-assisted form generation: describe the form's purpose in natural language; Zia generates the field set. Access: Edit mode → + Add component → Form → Using Zia.
Field Suggestions Using Zia
Real-time field suggestions appear while editing a form, based on the form's existing field context. Helps accelerate form design by recommending relevant fields that are commonly paired together.
23.3 Deluge Code Generation (Zia Assistance)
Within the Deluge editor, a Zia icon in the toolbar opens an AI chat interface where developers can:
- Generate Deluge scripts from conversational natural language prompts.
- Explain existing Deluge scripts in plain language.
This is powered by NLP, ML, and OpenAI (when configured). Zoho's in-house LLM for Deluge code generation was introduced as part of the 2025 H2 releases (Zoho LLM for Deluge Code Generation).
23.4 AI Modeler and AI Fields
The AI Modeler within Microservices manages both ready-to-use and custom-trained ML models:
Ready-to-Use Models (prebuilt by Zoho):
- Keyword Extraction
- Sentiment Analysis
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition)
- Object Detection
Custom AI Models (trained with sample datasets):
- Prediction (classification or regression)
- OCR (fine-tuned)
- Object Detection (fine-tuned)
Model limits per plan: 20 custom / 50 ready-to-use (Standard), 100 / 250 (Professional and Enterprise). AI call limits: 200/month (Standard), 1,000/month (Professional and Enterprise), with add-on available.
AI Fields in forms use these models for real-time inference on form submissions: prediction, keyword extraction, sentiment analysis, OCR, and object detection fields are available in the form builder's field palette (Section 2.3).
23.5 AI Deluge Tasks
In Deluge scripts (within workflows), developers can invoke AI models as backend API calls. Available tasks:
- Analyze Sentiment
- Predict Language
- Parse Phone Number
- Recognize Text (OCR)
- Find Named Entities
- Parse Address
- Translate
- Keyword Extraction
- Detect Object
- Detect Face
These are counted against the AI calls quota for the plan.
23.6 Zia Task (Generative AI in Deluge, 2025 H2)
The Zia task in Deluge (introduced in 2025 H2) allows any Deluge script to send arbitrary prompts to a configured generative AI model and receive structured responses. This brings LLM inference into any workflow or function, enabling complex text generation, summarization, classification, and reasoning as part of automation logic.
23.7 Zia Help Assistant
The Zia Help Assistant is a built-in help widget accessible from any screen in Creator via the Help icon (bottom bar). It provides:
- Knowledge base search with smart suggestions
- Country-specific support phone numbers
- Live agent chat
- Support contact form with screen recording (powered by Quartz)
23.8 Centralized AI Configuration
All generative AI features are centrally managed from: Admin Dashboard → Operations module → Zia section. Here, administrators can:
- Switch between Zoho GenAI (default, no configuration needed) and OpenAI or other external providers.
- Manage BYOK API keys for external AI providers.