Who Owns What On Zoom?

During the pandemic, teaching, office hours, meetings, etc., went on Zoom in academia (and elsewhere). In the post-pandemic period, there continued to be use of Zoom substantially above the pre-pandemic level. With the advent of AI, concerns have arisen concerning how content on Zoom might be used by Zoom or others.

From Inside Higher Ed:

...On [last] Monday, chatter began on X—the social network formerly known as Twitter—about Zoom updating terms and conditions. Most notably, Zoom stated it would have access to all customer data and could use it to train its artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. Concern began brewing, with many faculty members joining other Zoom users by publicly sharing their outrage. Some vowed to stop using Zoom altogether.

Zoom quickly reversed course late Monday night, updating its terms and conditions to clarify it will not use audio, video or chats to train AI without user consent...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2023/08/11/faculty-concerned-over-zooms-shifting-terms.

From the Zoom Blog:

...Following feedback received regarding Zoom’s recently updated terms of service Zoom has updated our terms of service and the below blog post to make it clear that Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models.

It’s important to us at Zoom to empower our customers with innovative and secure communication solutions. We’ve updated our terms of service... to further confirm that Zoom does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content (such as poll results, whiteboard, and reactions) to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models. In addition, we have updated our in-product notices to reflect this...

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

And back to Inside Higher Ed:

But what “consent” means remains vague. Terms and conditions are typically supposed to be broad, according to Sean Hogle, an attorney specializing in commercial data and intellectual property law. With the rise of AI comes a scramble to incorporate new language.

“All these companies want to monetize this data for AI,” Hogle said, noting that tech firms realized in the last eight months that “they’re sitting on a potential gold mine.” ...

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/2023/08/11/faculty-concerned-over-zooms-shifting-terms.

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Note that with AI, it's not exactly clear what "use" of content means. The models such as chatGPT are often described as mechanically looking for typical word order which is not the same as quoting large passages from written or oral work. To the extent that images are involved, AI might be used to take the image of someone and have them appear to say or do things. That is in part what the current actors' strike is about. Presumably, however, any photos of someone somewhere on the internet might be so used. (Faculty often have pictures of themselves on their university webpages.) Put another way, Zoom has a lot of "content," but most academics already have content on the web in the form of articles, recorded participation in meetings, etc., independent of what's on Zoom specifically.