As more and more of us are working from home these days, video conferencing software has become more important than ever. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are the big players here but as we have seen recently, Google is upgrading Google Meet to try and get a share of this booming market too. Competition between tech companies is good as it drives innovation and, theoretically at least, keeps prices as low as they should be. Tech innovation, however, is not always good and often these tech companies can stray into realms normally reserved for sci-fi dystopias, which is seemingly what is happening with Zoom at the moment.
Zoom has caused alarm among a number of human rights groups because it has started work on developing AI technology that will be able to monitor speech patterns and scan facial movements and reactions to determine user emotions. Yes, Zoom is training an AI to monitor your emotions while you are taking part in video meetings.
In a blog post from April detailing the capabilities of Zoom IQ for Sales metrics and analytics, the company laid out metrics it can collect that can be passed to salespeople following sales calls. These metrics include:
Talk-listen ratio
Talking speed
Filler words
Longest spiel (monologue)
Patience
Engaging questions
Next steps set up
Sentiment/Engagement analysis
Zoom is not alone in doing this, protocol reported in April that other sales and customer service companies like Uniphore and Sybil have been trying to implement similar technology into their own offerings for a while now and that Zoom is trying to catch up. The problem, however, is that as well as sales calls, Zoom is used in many other workplaces to mediate relations between employees but also between employers and employees. Adding these types of metrics to this type of power dynamic seems scary to say the least.
It should come as no surprise then that over 25 rights groups have sent a joint letter to Zoom CEO, Eric Yuan, asking him to halt further research into this type of AI research. That letter calls out emotion AI as flawed and asks Zoom to do what is right for its users. At the time of writing, Yuan is yet to respond to the groups.
In more playful news about a fun update, Zoom recently introduced animal avatars for users to take advantage of during calls.
