One of the biggest video conferencing platforms, Zoom, has a new update to its terms of services. Under this update, the company can now access the user data and use the same for machine learning and artificial intelligence. In layman’s terms, the user will be providing their data on which the AI will feed and learn. This data includes user’s video footage recorded by the application during the use.
What makes this new update controversial is that the user cannot opt out of this scheme. The section 10.2 and 10.4 of the terms of services provides Zoom the right to “solely retain” information from “Service Generated Data”.
After the news broke out and the backlash started, Zoom’s Chief Product Officer tried to address the concerns. The company stresses that it’ll not use user generated data without their consent and one can also opt out of the generative AI feature. These claims are contradictory to what users are reporting.
This has again raised the question around ethics of consent in the field of technology. People are seeing this as a violation of the right to privacy. Zoom had been under a lot of scrutiny before as well when password details of around 500,000 accounts were leaked and sold on the dark web.
