Zoom has walked back on its updated terms of service (TOS) and called its publication “a process failure” after drawing flak for seeking access to users’ data for artificial intelligence (AI) training without scope for consent.
The online video conference platform in March 2023 added a clause to its terms of service. Stack Diary, an online news platform, on August 6 published an article explaining the implications of Zoom’s TOS changes. The media report gained attention after a post on Hacker News, a social media news website, claimed the changes allowed Zoom to use customer data to train AI models “with no opt-out”.
Terms of Service
Zoom’s TOS (particularly sections 10.2 and 10.4) were questioned about how the platform used customer data. The sections gave Zoom the authority to compile and utilise “Service Generated Data,” namely telemetry data, product usage data, diagnostic data, and similar content or data that the platform collects in connection with customers’ use of their services or software.
A clause called 10.4, as per Stack Diary, gave Zoom the following permission:
“You agree to grant and hereby grant Zoom a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required or necessary to redistribute, publish, import, access, use, store, transmit, review, disclose, preserve, extract, modify, reproduce, share, use, display, copy, distribute, translate, transcribe, create derivative works, and process Customer Content and to perform all acts with respect to the Customer Content, including AI and ML training and testing.”
The clause in the picture sparked social media outrage after a Harvard professor, Gabriella (Biella) Coleman, made posted a media report on the TOS on X, which was formerly known as Twitter:
https://twitter.com/BiellaColeman/status/1688332659108257792
When the news spiralled in comments on Hacker News, Aparna Bawa, chief operating officer at Zoom, responded to a user in comments:
“To clarify, Zoom customers decide whether to enable generative AI features (recently launched on a free trial basis) and separately whether to share customer content with Zoom for product improvement purposes.
Also, Zoom participants receive an in-meeting notice or a Chat Compose pop-up when these features are enabled through our UI, and they will definitely know their data may be used for product improvement purposes.”
Zoom clarifies, updates terms of service
Zoom said in a blog post on August 7 (later updated on August 11) that it had updated the terms of service based on customer feedback.
In the post, Zoom’s chief product officer Smita Hashim explained how the company uses and who owns the various forms of content. About using customer content for artificial intelligence/machine learning, the platform made the following statement:
“Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models.”
Eric S. Yuan, founder and chief executive officer of Zoom, in a Linkedin post on August 9 called the terms of service “a process failure”. He said, “Given Zoom’s value of care and transparency, we would absolutely never train AI models with customers’ content without getting their explicit consent.”
Many Zoom products have AI as a core part of audio/video meeting experiences, room solutions, and customer engagement offerings.
After the controversy, several technology experts have said they have lingering doubts regarding how Zoom uses customer data for AI/ML learning.
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