It’s no secret that this surge in the AI field has prompted many companies to explore new ways of securing data for training their AI models. And as part of these initiatives, Zoom quietly revised its terms of service, allowing the utilization of customer data, including chats, for training its AI models. However, after receiving widespread backlash, the company has decided to reverse these changes.
Labelled as “Customer Content” and introduced in March, the new policy changes granted the company an extensive array of rights, including a “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license,” enabling the use of customer content for purposes such as machine learning, AI training, testing, and broader product development.
However, these changes raised concerns about Zoom’s practices and sparked discussions about the ethical boundaries of data usage. As a result, the company issued a blog post to address the situation and clarify its stance, asserting that it would not engage in the activities that the revised terms appeared to permit.
“Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent. We’ve updated our terms of service to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” said Zoom.
Zoom IQ
Similar to other tech companies, Zoom’s decision to update its privacy policy stems from the introduction of the “Zoom IQ” feature, which uses AI to summarize chat discussions and generates automated responses for text-based queries. And although account owners are required to grant consent before using these tools, participants in a Zoom IQ-enabled call are only presented with the option to “Leave Meeting” or acknowledge with a “Got it” button. This means that if you choose not to exit the call, Zoom will use your data to train its AI regardless of your decision.
2023-08-08 15:06:42