Have you ever stopped to read the complete terms and conditions before signing up for Zoom, the video-conferencing platform? Or do you ever regularly check for updates on terms and conditions without any prompt? Probably not!
What's the issue?
Zoom, everyone's go-to work-from-home office space, has been accused of trying to use audio, video, and chat content of users to train AI, among other things.
It all goes back to Zoom's updated Terms and Conditions that came into effect on July 27.
On the other hand, Zoom has come out to clarify that it is NOT using customers' video, audio, and chat content to train AI without their consent and also added a new line to its T&C.
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The problematic part of the T&C
Screenshot of the terms and conditions
Section 10.4 of Zoom's updated Terms and Conditions states that users agree to give the company "perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable, and transferable license and all other rights required" for "Customer Content" to do what the company pleases to do including for marketing, analytics, produce and service development.
"Customer Content" according to Zoom is your video, audio, and chat content.
Zoom also reserves similar rights of use for what it calls "Service Generated Data" which includes platform usage data, diagnostic data, and other information it gets from analysing your content and behaviour.
After the outrage over Zoom's explicit rights over customer content or your video, audio, and chat data, the company's Chief Product Officer, Smita Hashim said that they don't use customer content for training AI without consent.
Now, the updated T&C includes a sentence in bold that says: Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.
Zoom has some generative AI features that customers can turn on. It includes features that summarises a meeting's chat history among others.
By turning on this feature, the user is agreeing to allow Zoom to use their content including video, audio, and chat content to train AI.
This consent can also be given by the host of a meeting on your behalf. As a participant in a meeting, you will have two options - agree with the host to share your data, or leave the meeting.
The T&C without the additional line would have given Zoom overarching access to user content and data to be used for various purposes including training AI.
With the additional line, Zoom is liable to litigation if it violates the terms and conditions, especially in countries with strong privacy laws.
The problem with using large data to train AI is the potential use of personal, sensitive, and copyrighted content in the datasets.