Memorandum

To: University of Toronto Faculty, Staff, Students

From: Isaac Straley, CISO and Avi Hyman, Director ARC

Subject:  Zoom Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Date:  August 14, 2023

As some of you may have seen, there have been recent media reports about Zoom and Artificial Intelligence (AI). According to some media reports, Zoom recently updated their Terms of Service in such a way that it might allow Zoom to use a customer’s data to train their AI tools and functionality.

Following those media reports, Zoom has issued an official statement and further updated their consumer account terms to state “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.”

Specifically, as it pertains to the University of Toronto, our institutional Zoom services (accounts that go through the utoronto.zoom.us portal) are governed by a unique institutional agreement, and we can confirm that our Zoom data is not being used to train Zoom’s AI models. These institutional agreements are instrumental in protecting university data and privacy as many companies look to implement generative AI in their products.

If you are currently using a consumer Zoom account rather than logging in through the University’s institutional portal (in other words, if you are logging in via www.zoom.us versus utoronto.zoom.us), you may want to consider converting your consumer account to a U of T account. Please keep in mind that even if you registered your consumer account with your university email address, that does not mean you are using the U of T service; only those who log in via the institutional portal (utoronto.zoom.us) using their UTORid are covered under the institutional service.

For further information about converting a consumer account to a U of T account, and all other support questions regarding Zoom at the University, please contact your divisional EdTech or IT department.

Isaac Straley, Chief Information Security Officer,
Avi Hyman, Director, Academic, Research & Collaborative (ARC) Technologies

Information Technology Services
University of Toronto