Following the news that altered terms of services allowed the company to take user data to train AI, video conferencing company Zoom has claimed that it will not use user data to train AI programs “without consent”.
In an update sent to Stealth Optional, Zoom PR explained that the company has further revised its Terms of Service to reflect its stance on artificial intelligence. Specifically, the company wants to rectify previous worries about recording user calls to fuel AI.
Shared in a blog post by the company, Zoom claims that the new Terms of Service “confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”
In the revised TOS document, it now reads: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.”
However, Zoom’s Terms of Services do still explain that they will use some data for the training of AI programs. The current version of the company’s Terms of Service reads as follows:
“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… for the purpose of product and service development, marketing, analytics, quality assurance, machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing, improvement of the Services…”
The blog post still claims that Zoom “will not” use customer data to train AI programs, although some user data appears to still be allowed in the Terms of Service to train some form of artificial intelligence software.
In a statement from a Zoom spokesperson released to Stealth Optional, the company claimed: “Zoom customers decide whether to enable generative AI features, and separately whether to share customer content with Zoom for product improvement purposes. 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.”
The use of artificial intelligence in Zoom software has already been controversial in the past. Last year, the company introduced an Emotion Analyser AI that monitored school children during remote lessons, a move that was criticised by human rights groups.