Zoom says it isn’t training AI on calls without consent. But other data is fair game

An update to Zoom’s terms of service is raising alarm bells on social media, with users claiming it reveals the videoconferencing company is now tapping their online doctor visits and virtual happy hours to train artificial intelligence models. “Don’t try to negotiate with our new overlords.” The company quickly responded with a blog post on Monday stressing that it “will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent,” and adding a line to the terms to make this clearer. “The face of these terms of service does now assure the user that Zoom is not going to use their customer content for the purpose of training artificial intelligence models without their consent,” John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told The Associated Press. The terms state that service-generated data can be used for “machine learning or artificial intelligence (including the purposes of training and tuning algorithms and models.” Zoom’s blog post says the company considers such data “to be our data,” and experts confirm this language would allow the company to use this data for AI training without obtaining additional consent. But Zoom added a more explicit caveat to the terms on Monday, saying: “Notwithstanding the above, Zoom will not use audio, video or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent.” With this language, Davisson said that using such data to train AI without a user consenting would now constitute a violation of the terms on Zoom’s part, opening the company up to litigation.