Zoom reverses terms of service after blowback over AI data policy

Hashim said the company will not use any customer content, "including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent". (Representational Image)

Zoom has made changes to its terms of service agreement after a recent update allowed the company to collect data for AI training without customer consent.

According to StackDiary, the changes were made in March quietly, and as per the agreement it gave Zoom rights to collect and store data, "for any purpose, to the extent and in the manner permitted under applicable law".

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Zoom updated the agreement to give itself rights to use customer data to train its AI systems, "including training and tuning of algorithms and models".

In a blog post, Zoom's Chief Product Officer, Smita Hashim wrote that Zoom will seek consent before using customer data for AI training, and it will be "used solely to improve the performance and accuracy of these AI services".

“We have permission to use this customer content to provide value-added services based on this content, but our customers continue to own and control their content,” wrote Hashim.

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Hashim said the company will not use any customer content, "including education records or protected health information, to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent".

The post also says that the company has updated section 10.4 of its agreement to make it clear that Zoom, "will not use audio, video, or chat customer content to train our artificial intelligence models without your consent".