[Air-L] fyi: Zoom claims right to use your sessions to train AI

[Robert W Gehl]

Hi, rick --

Thanks for sharing this. I saw your post on the fediverse, and following 
your lead, read the relevant section. In my professional opinion: Zoom's 
claim to our voice and face data for training AI is super gross.

People may wonder: what do we do instead of Zoom? One answer I could 
point to is Nextcloud. I host my own Nextcloud server and I regularly 
use its Talk application to do video chats -- in fact, I just got off a 
call with an interviewee for my book project.

For those of you who don't self-host and want to rely on university or 
institutional licenses, Nextcloud could be something to point to when 
you talk to your admins about where to go if Zoom is no longer attractive.

There are obviously other alternatives (e.g., Jitsi) but I can 
personally say Nextcloud has done well for me.

- Rob

On 2023-08-07 07:47, Richard Forno via Air-L wrote:
> Hi folks -
>
> As I posted to rickf at indieweb.social <mailto:rickf at indieweb.social> yesterday, for those who may be using Zoom for teaching, research, external collaborations and/or personal meetings, please note that their latest terms of service (7/27/23) sections 10.1 - 10.4 seems to give them the right to use the audio/video/shared content from your Zoom sessions to train AI models.[1] I'm not aware of any opt-out to this collection.   This item began surfacing over the weekend so more coverage in the coming days is likely as the tech & privacy communities digest the potential legal, medical, educational, and IP ramifications of this practice.
>
> [1] https://explore.zoom.us/en/terms/
>
> Just providing a heads-up for AoIRistas concerned with how their (potentially sensitive) data, voice, and/or likeness - or those of their friends, family, students, or collaborators - may be used by a third party.  IIRC BlueSky claims something similar with content posted on that platform, but imo that's not as far-reaching or potentially invasive as this move by Zoom.
>
> <sigh> One wonders if there are any internet ethics folks employed & empowered @ these places anymore, but I'm not optimistic. :/
>
> -- rick
>