After backlash, Zoom reversed its terms of service so it will not use customer content to train AI (August 2023)

The problem

In March 2023 Zoom updated its online terms of service, with the change taking effect 27 July 2023. Section 10.4 granted Zoom broad rights over “Service Generated Data for any purpose,” and, as [source] quoted the terms directly, the permitted purposes included “machine learning or artificial intelligence (including for the purposes of training and tuning of algorithms and models)” [source]. There was no opt-out. A second, independent newsroom quoted a different part of the same clause: [source] reported that “In Section 10.4 of Zoom“‘s terms, “updated in March,” users granted Zoom a licence for purposes including “machine learning, artificial intelligence, training, testing” [source]. On 6–7 August 2023 the clause was surfaced publicly and a backlash spread among users, educators and privacy advocates who read it as permission to feed calls, chats and other communications into AI training. Zoom’s own blog later confirmed the origin firsthand: “We changed our online terms of service in March 2023” [source].

What happened

After the backlash, Zoom reversed course and updated its terms. In its first-party [source] (attributed to Chief Product Officer Smita Hashim, “edited on August 11, 2023”), the company said it “does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content … to train Zoom’s or third-party artificial intelligence models,” and that it had moved to “reorganize Section 10” of the terms [source]. [source] reported the company had updated the terms so that “we will not use audio, video, or chat Customer Content to train our artificial intelligence models without customer consent” [source]. [source] independently reported the broadened statement, that Zoom “does not use any of your audio, video, chat, screen-sharing, attachments, or other communications like customer content” to train AI, noting the change to “the previously troublesome section 10 in” Zoom’s terms of service [source].

The distinctive fact

The reversal carried a consent caveat rather than a blanket prohibition. As [source] reported the clarification, Zoom said that “for AI, we do not use audio, video or chat content for training our models without customer consent”, and users who switch on Zoom’s generative-AI features (Meeting Summary, Team Chat Compose) consent to Zoom training on their content [source]. The walk-back removed the automatic, no-opt-out AI-training grant over communications; it did not remove AI training entirely.

The weakest link (source honesty)

The single soft spot is that the original, pre-walk-back section 10.4 text is quoted here through independent press (CNBC and NBC News), not from an archived first-party copy of Zoom’s old terms page. CNBC and NBC News are strong independent secondaries (Tier 2), and they quote the clause verbatim and agree on its substance, but the canonical original terms document itself is not in hand. Zoom’s own blog confirms first-party only that the terms changed in March 2023, not the exact wording of the disputed clause. Two independent newsrooms quoting the clause verbatim and agreeing on its substance is what the public-record standard rests on, and that standard is met here. An archived first-party copy of Zoom’s pre-walk-back section 10.4 would strengthen the record further; it is not in hand, and this page does not claim it.

Related case files

• Adobe adds a “we don’t train AI on your content” clarification after backlash (2024): the same ToS/AI-training walk-back pattern, one year later.
• Dropbox adds a third-party-AI toggle and confirms customer data is not used to train models (2023): a platform granting the opt-out Zoom’s users demanded.
• WeTransfer removes an AI-training clause from its terms after backlash (2025): a near-identical terms reversal in the file-transfer category.
• Slack updates its AI privacy principles after user backlash over ML training opt-out (2024): another communications tool clarifying customer-content training.