Zoom knots itself a legal tangle over use of customer data for training AI models

Tech Crunch ^ | August 8, 2023 | Natasha Lomas

[DoodleBob]

Three years ago Zoom settled with the FTC over a claim of deceptive marketing around security claims, having been accused of overstating the strength of the encryption it offered. Now the videoconferencing platform could be headed for a similar tangle in Europe in relation to its privacy small print.

The recent terms & conditions controversy sequence goes like this: A clause added to Zoom’s legalese back in March 2023 grabbed attention on Monday after a post on Hacker News claimed it allowed the company to use customer data to train AI models “with no opt out”. (This Stack Diary report was first to highlight the implications of Zoom’s T&Cs changes which then got picked over in comments on Hacker News). Cue outrage on social media.

Although, on closer inspection, some pundits suggested the no opt out applied only to “service generated data” (telemetry data, product usage data, diagnostics data etc), i.e. rather than everything Zoom’s customers are doing and saying on the platform.

Still, people were mad. Meetings are, after all, painful enough already without the prospect of some of your “inputs” being repurposed to feed AI models that might even — in our fast-accelerating AI-generated future — end up making your job redundant.

The relevant clauses from Zoom’s T&Cs are 10.2 through 10.4 (screengrabbed below). Note the bolded last line emphasizing the consent claim related to processing “audio, video or chat customer content” for AI model training — which comes after a wall of text where users entering into the contractual agreement with Zoom commit to grant it expansive rights for all other types of usage data (and other, non-AI training purposes too):

[DoodleBob]

What if Zoom hires a third party to build a model for them using this data? The intellectual property remains with the third party, and Zoom stays within the letter of its T&C.

[Responsibility2nd]

I heard just today that Zoom was calling it’s work from home employees back to the office.

For meetings.

Sarc or reals. I don’t know.

[DoodleBob]

It’s for real.

[TBP]

Oops.