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Not Using Zoom

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Re: Not Using Zoom

#181

Post by jlokier »

tensor wrote: post #112
purpleblue wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this gets big, most companies won't like the idea of their internal company calls being used to train AI, and they will switch off ASAP.

Despite the language, I have a very hard time believing that Zoom is actually trying to train a generative AI on private video calls. If I had to guess this is there so that they can train adjacent services such as malware scanners for shared files or possibly their captioning service using small snippets of audio. I'd still prefer it if they had far tighter language and clarity on how they use user data, but the tec…

It's a strange mixture, and it's anticipating future needs as well as current things like malware scanning. Probably Zoom and all the other mainstream meeting services will have to use AIs on audio and video streams in due course, in an arms race against other AIs being used to generate audio and video spam, fake job interview candidates, scam calls from people that look and sound like your own family, and such things. On the other hand, who wants their daily standups scrutinised by facial sentiment analysis and posted to monthly management reports, which is the sort of thing it seems Microsoft might do.

I don't think Zoom is at fault for wanting or needing to use AIs or plan to, on the streams. They might even be ahead of the game. But their communication about it is rather weasely at the moment, and their COO and CISO comments on here don't help with that.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#182

Post by wintermutestwin »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #52

Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Weasel words.

"We don't use your data to train AI models" (but we can pass it to another entity to do so)

"we would not do so without customer consent" (...and everyone who uses our service has consented to anything we want them to in our convoluted ToS.

What you should have said is: "Zoom doesn't use audio, video or chat content to do anything but transmit it to the parties that are logged in to the meeting."

I frequently have to use Zoom for communications that are privileged by law. I wonder when the class action will happen?

Re: Not Using Zoom

#183

Post by tornato7 »

lucideer wrote: post #159
tornato7 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you can change the maxFullResolutionParticipants setting in config.js to fix this.

you can't in their free saas, and they don't offer paid saas on a per-user basis (just a $100/mo plan for 300 users)

You can change it on their free self-hosted deployment.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#184

Post by wintermutestwin »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #178
cameldrv wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They explicitly said “we do not”, not “we will not.” The ToS and their statements allow them to change their mind at any time without notifying anyone.

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. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Same regurgitation of weasel words.

"our AI models"

"your consent"

Re: Not Using Zoom

#185

Post by jcoder »

jlokier wrote: post #174
jcoder wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Customer consent” as in, accepting the TOS by continuing to use the product? Have some respect for the intelligence of your users. If you’re playing dirty lawyerball in HN comments you can’t be trusted to act in good faith.

It's subtler than that. You are not the customer.

Say more things. Are you suggesting that by “customer consent”, they mean the consent of someone other than those of us paying for zoom? That makes no sense, and is not supported by the use of “customer” in their TOS.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#186

Post by michael_adams12 »

michael_adams12 wrote: post #129

This is Michael Adams, Zoom’s CISO. I want to reiterate our thanks for your feedback and emphasize our continuing commitment to protecting our customers’ data as we make exciting improvements to Zoom products. At Zoom, we do not use customer audio, video, and chat to train our generative AI models without customer consent. You can learn more about enabling generative AI features, consent, and notice here: https://blo…

Thanks very much for your continued interest and feedback.

Our updated blog clarifies our approach: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Most importantly - 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.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#187

Post by burkaman »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #177
burkaman wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She's lying, if you click on the blog post you can see that if an account owner opts in, they use audio, video, and chat content of all participants to train their models. As a user you are notified of this but not given a way to opt out, other than just leaving the meeting.

Based on feedback, 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. https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

That's nice, but your comment still says "We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models". You do, currently. If you don't think there's anything wrong with that, why come here to lie about it?

"without your consent" is also very misleading - you get the account owner's consent, but if I join another company's Zoom meeting and they have this turned on, I am not meaningfully asked for consent. I am informed, but the only way to "opt out" is to leave the meeting immediately (but you already have my face?) and uninstall Zoom. This is obvious coercion, Zoom has majority market share and most people do not have the freedom to decline when somebody sends them a meeting link.

Re: Not Using Zoom

#188

Post by amelius »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #10

I came directly to the comments to recommend Jitsi instead. Glad the author made the same early in the article.

With the maturing of WebRTC and related technologies, shouldn't it be dead simple by now to create an online video conferencing application that runs completely in the browser?

Re: Not Using Zoom

#189

Post by whoomp12342 »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #52

Hi there, I'm the COO of Zoom. We currently do not use audio, video or chat content to train AI models and we would not do so without customer consent. Please see our blog https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Hi COO, of zoom, when people leave or join our zoom meetings the CHIME does not work when the host has left audio. this makes our business really hard to operate. as we rely on your awesome product. HALP

Re: Not Using Zoom

#190

Post by lucideer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #170
sickill wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s try to convince our IT admins to approve Jitsi then. If we don’t try then we’ll be destined to Zoom/Teams/Meet.

It's not the IT admins, it's the CISO or equivalent. At their level they will be concerned with approving anything that's not widely popular and may be perceived as an "unsafe" choice. An extension of the age-old "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" line of thinking.

I don't know which companies/CISOs you've worked with but in my experience it's the opposite: CISOs tend to be wary of transferring corp data to 3rd-parties, for both legal/compliance and security reasons. It's generally engineering/IT management that tend to be more wary of self-hosting maintenance.
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