By
Chimamanda U. Martha
February 13th, 2024
In response to criticism of its updated Terms of Service, Zoom stated it does not train its AI tools “without customer consent.”
Recently, Zoom Video Communications Inc (NASDAQ: ZM) released its updated terms of service. According to the new policy, Zoom might use its customers’ data to train its artificial intelligence (AI) products. In a blog post issued later, Zoom stated it does not train its artificial intelligence models on audio, video, or text chats from the app “without customer consent.”
The updated terms of use came into effect on July 27. The document reads that customers grant Zoom “perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required or necessary” to their content for a number of purposes, which now include “machine learning” and “artificial intelligence.” Another section of the terms states that Zoom can use certain user data for “machine learning or artificial intelligence (including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms and models).”
The terms have been met with criticism, as they mark unethical employment of data and pose a risk of misuse of personal information.
In response to negative comments about using people’s data for training AI, Zoom Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim came up with a post that states the opposite.
“We recently introduced two powerful generative AI features – Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose – on a free trial basis to enhance your Zoom experience. These features offer automated meeting summaries and AI-powered chat composition. Zoom account owners and administrators control whether to enable these AI features for their accounts,” wrote Smita Hashim.
Further, she explained that while enabling Zoom IQ Meeting Summary or Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose, users would be presented with a transparent consent process for training the AI models.
Smita Hashim added:
“Your content is used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services. And even if you chose to share your data, it will not be used for training of any third-party models.”
To shed more light on the use of customer calls and video conferences, Zoom added the following to its Terms of Service:
“Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”
Previously, there already were similar cases that led to legal action. An example is OpenAI which faced a federal lawsuit claiming the company trained its ChatGPT chatbot using data stolen from millions of people.
Zoom AI Tools
Earlier this year, Zoom rolled out two generative AI features: Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose.
Zoom IQ Meeting Summary allows meeting hosts to initiate an AI-generated summary of their meeting powered by Zoom’s own large language models. When the host enables this feature in a meeting, participants will automatically receive a summary after the meeting ends.
Meanwhile, Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose allows users to leverage OpenAI’s technology, to draft messages based on the context of a Team Chat thread in addition to changing message tone and length as well as rephrasing responses to customize text recommendations.