Zoom says it will not use audio, video or chat content to train AI without customer consent

Zoom wants remote workers back to the office Zoom, famous for allowing employees to work from home, has mandated that their employees return to the office two days per week.

Zoom has updated its terms of service to be more "transparent" to customers on how the technology giant would use meeting conversations to train its artificial intelligence (AI), a blog post published Monday reads.

In March, the company updated its services on how it would train AI features like Zoom IQ Meeting Summary and Zoom IQ Team Chat Compose.

Using data from meetings, the AI can summarize the conversations and then use that information to help customers write messages.

The blog post says Zoom's most recent update is meant to provide clarity on the features.

"To reiterate: we do not use audio, video, or chat content for training our models without customer consent," the blog post by Smita Hashim, chief product officer at Zoom, reads.

According to a June 5 blog post from the company, the two AI features launched that month raising questions on if the company used customer data between June and August while the terms of service were being updated.

"Zoom updated its Terms of Service in March 2023 to provide transparency about how Zoom uses and who owns the various forms of content across our platform," a Zoom spokesperson told CTVNews.ca in an email. " A further update on Monday was made to clarify what our practice has been and continues to be – that we will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without customer consent."

Account owners can choose whether to enable the two AI features on a free trial basis. When an account has enabled the AI, a message will appear for all participants of a Zoom meeting.

The options given to participants are "leave meeting" or "got it" to agree to the conditions.

The rules also apply to customers using the platform for school or health care.

If an account gives Zoom permission to use its content, it could use protected health information and education records to help train AI.

"We will not use customer content, including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent," the blog reads.

According to the company, any time the AI is being used participants will see a consent message.

"You will also be presented with a transparent consent process for training our AI models using your customer content," the blog post says. "Your content is used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services."

The company says no third-party models will be able to use the data.