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Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

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Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#511

Post by lucb1e »

nerdponx wrote: post #467
lucb1e wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've had good experiences with competitors That's flipped for me: I've had good experiences with zoom on occasion. The only time we use Zoom is with US customers, so a handful of times per year I'd estimate. Before covid, I only ever heard of Zoom in the context of laughably bad vulnerabilities; then during covid, suddenly it was a new verb used online to mean video calls. In a world where there are many establishe…

When it comes to ridiculous EULA provisions like in this thread, are any of those competitors any better? Of course the open source ones are, but do people actually use those? Maybe they're popular in Europe, but I certainly won't be able to convince a potential American employer to interview me over Jitsi any time soon.

We use Signal at work, for another data point. We'd use Jitsi if we were bigger and wanted to have yet another service to maintain (it was discussed but we already run quite a few things and it's not like we're a hosting business)

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#513

Post by lucb1e »

jonReadingNews wrote: post #496
jonReadingNews wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can’t help but notice the distinction between between customers _deciding_ and participants being _informed_. Can participants not also decide? Can the decisions not be mutual and decided per-session? My child uses zoom for school and our family for healthcare - both of those scenarios make us participants. It sounds like we are beholden to the decisions of your customer, the institutions. I am extremely concerned…

The blog post your company just published confirms this: Account owners or administrators (“customers”) provide consent. Participants receive notice. Gross and disappointing.

That's not how consent works in the GDPR legal sense. (But maybe that's not something Zoom USA cares about if an insignificant amount of profit comes from EU.)

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#514

Post by michael_adams12 »

webmink wrote: post #499
aparnabzoom wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your question - we have clarified our position in this blog. We do not use video, audio and chat content to train our AI models without customer consent. Please read more here https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

It's great that you are engaging and writing about this, many thanks. While your blog is interesting, it doesn't change the impact of the Terms of Service as currently written. They seem to give you the freedom to train your current and future AI/ML capabilities using any Customer Content (10.4), and your terms apparently have your users warrant that doing so will not infringe any rights (10.6). Perhaps your terms of…

Following up on this point, 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.

You can see that now clearly stated in our blog: https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#515

Post by 23B1 »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #462

Hi there - this is Aparna from Zoom, our Chief Operating Officer. Thank you for your care and concern for our customers - we are grateful for the opportunity to double click on how we treat customer content. To clarify, Zoom customers decide whether to enable generative AI features (recently launched on a free trial basis) and separately whether to share customer content with Zoom for product improvement purposes. Al…

Thanks for your response, but as you can see in the comments even HN users are confused about this.

Where can we find the ability to 'switch off' any sort of generative AI features or data harvesting?

I ask because the zoom administrative interface is an absolute nightmare that feels more like a bunch of darkpatterns than usable UX. When I asked your customer support team – on this occasion and others – they clearly don't even read the request, let alone provide a sufficient response. I've been going back-and-forth on a related issue with your CSRs for almost two months; they've neither escalated nor solved my problem.

The bottom line is that as a paying customer, you're incentivizing me and others to move to different services – namely because you seem to be entangled by your own bureaucracy and lack of values than any outside problem.

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#516

Post by haldujai »

johndhi wrote: post #502
haldujai wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Haha wow this is a great post. I am a lawyer and you may have solved a problem I recently encountered. So you think this is saying that generic language in the Zoom BAA constitutes permission to de-identify? Not that I’m an expert on the nuance here but I think it gives them permission to use PHI, especially if spun in the correct way, which then gives them permission to deid and do whatever with. My experience has…

Awesome. Thank you!

Happy to help. Let me know where to send the invoice for my non-legal legal expertise, if your rate is anything like my startup's lawyer you'll find me a bargain! Haha.

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#517

Post by rexreed »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #493
tailspin2019 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for participating in the discussion here, it’s helpful. Clause 10.4 in your terms seems to grant you rights to do pretty much anything with “Customer Content” (including the AI training specifically being talked about). So I’m still a bit confused because regardless of any opt in mechanism in your product, these usage terms don’t seem to be predicated on the user having done anything to opt in other than osten…

Thanks for your question - we have clarified our position in this blog. We do not use video, audio and chat content to train our AI models without customer consent. Please read more here https://blog.zoom.us/zooms-term-service-ai/

Do you have a public, published trustworthy AI framework that you use to guide your AI projects? Something like https://www.cognilytica.com/trustworthy-ai-workshop/ ? Would be good to see what decisions and processes you follow to guide your AI efforts, how you work with suppliers and partners, consent and disclosure policies, and how you communicate internally and externally.

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#518

Post by j45 »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #462

Hi there - this is Aparna from Zoom, our Chief Operating Officer. Thank you for your care and concern for our customers - we are grateful for the opportunity to double click on how we treat customer content. To clarify, Zoom customers decide whether to enable generative AI features (recently launched on a free trial basis) and separately whether to share customer content with Zoom for product improvement purposes. Al…

One of the major faults of Zoom possibly from the rate of change in it is how many features are buried in the web configuration that are not in the physical application.

Seamless integration and access between the two is not where it should be.

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#519

Post by j45 »

webmink wrote: post #473
aparnabzoom wrote: post #462

Hi there - this is Aparna from Zoom, our Chief Operating Officer. Thank you for your care and concern for our customers - we are grateful for the opportunity to double click on how we treat customer content. To clarify, Zoom customers decide whether to enable generative AI features (recently launched on a free trial basis) and separately whether to share customer content with Zoom for product improvement purposes. Al…

Thanks for commenting. The issue is not with using AI features though - it is with the Terms granting you unrestricted and eternal use to our conversations to train your AI and potentially disclose our work to your other customers.

Well said. Zoom thinks we are not talking about the terms of service as it pertains to a particular feature and not their entire rights moving forward.

Re: Zoom terms now allow training AI on user content with no opt out

#520

Post by [deleted] »

aparnabzoom wrote: post #471
tailspin2019 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say “Zoom customers decide … whether to share customer content with Zoom”… Can you elaborate on whether this is opt-out or opt-in? Does a new user who starts to use Zoom today have this turned on by default? Usually when companies say things like “customers decide” it can gloss over a lot of detail like hidden settings that default to “on” or other potentially misleading / dark patterns. Given the obvious in…

Hi there - this is opt in. A new user starting to use Zoom today does not have this turned on by default.

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