Zoom says it was not using private calls to train AI system

The pandemic-era video conferencing service came under fire this week for rewriting its terms of service during the March launch of its generative AI-powered "Zoom IQ" features, effectively making all "Customer Content" available for AI training, The Byte reported.

Chief Product Officer of Zoom Smita Hashim, said in a recent blog post, "It’s important to us at Zoom to empower our customers with innovative and secure communication solutions. We’ve updated our terms of service (in section 10.4) to further confirm that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent."

The updated TOS states that by checking the agreement box, users "consent to Zoom's access, use, collection, creation, modification, distribution, processing, sharing, maintenance, and storage" of user data for "any purpose," including "machine learning or artificial intelligence including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms and models."

Zoom users, who appeared to be largely unaware of the update until Stack Diary first reported on the changes on Sunday, were upset by the information.

Zoom revised its policy in response to complaints from users.

The company also further emphasized that it won't vacuum up video call data without user permission. But the "notwithstanding" note in the freshly updated TOS is still pretty vague about what the scope of "Customer Content" allows or disallows.

Overall, the company has had a bad reputation, especially in light of its prior privacy scandals including skimping on security, misleading users, and sharing personal data with third parties without consent or notification.