Slack Uses Your Private Conversations to Train Its AI
Slack users online— on Mastodon , Threads , and Hackernews —have reacted with alarm to a little-known privacy page that describes how their Slack conversations, including private messages, are being used to train what the Salesforce-owned company calls “Machine Systems” learning” (ML) and “Artificial intelligence” (AI). The only way to opt out of these features is to send your company’s Slack Settings Administrator an email to Slack asking them to disable the feature.
The policy, which applies to all Slack instances, not just those that have opted in to the Slack AI add-on, states that Slack’s systems “analyze customer data (such as messages, content, and files) sent to Slack, as well as other information (including usage information) as defined in our privacy policy and your customer agreement.”
So, essentially, everything you enter into Slack is used to train these systems. Slack says data “will not leak across workspaces” and that there are “technical controls in place to prevent access.” Regardless, we all know that conversations with AI chatbots are not private , and it’s not hard to imagine something going wrong. Given the risk, the company must be offering something extremely attractive in return… right?
What are the benefits of allowing Slack to use your data to train AI?
The section outlining the potential benefits of Slack converting all your conversations into a larger language model says it will allow the company to provide improved search results, better autofill suggestions, better channel recommendations, and (I’d be kidding) improved emoji suggestions. If all of this sounds useful to you, great! Personally, I don’t think any of these things—except perhaps better search—will make Slack any more useful for getting work done.
The topic of emoticons is especially absurd. Slack is literally saying that they need to feed your conversations into an AI system so they can provide better emoji recommendations. Consider this real quote, which I promise you comes from Slack , not The Onion:
Slack can suggest emoji reactions to messages using the content and sentiment of the message, historical emoji usage, and the frequency of emoji use within a team in different contexts. For example, if 🎉 is a common reaction to holiday messages on a particular channel, we’ll encourage users to respond to new, equally positive messages with 🎉.
I am in awe just thinking about the implications of this incredible technology and I no longer worry about any privacy implications. Artificial intelligence is truly the future of communication.
How to Opt Out of Your Company’s Participation in Slack’s Artificial Intelligence Training
The bad news is that you, as an individual user, can’t opt out of Slack by using conversation history to train its large language model. This can only be done by a Slack admin, which in most cases will be someone from your company’s IT department. And there’s no button in the settings to opt out—admins need to send an email asking for it.
Here’s Slack’s exact wording on the matter:
If you want to exclude your customer data from Slack’s global models, you can opt-out. To opt out, please ask your organization, workspace owners, or primary owner to contact our Customer Success team at [email protected] with your workspace/organization URL and the subject line “Slack Global Model Opt-Out Request” . We will process your request and respond once the waiver is complete.
It smells like a dark pattern to do something annoying to discourage people from doing it. Hopefully the company will make the cancellation process easier after the current complaints they are receiving from customers.
A reminder that Slack DMs are not private.
To be honest, I was a little amused at the prospect of using my Slack data to improve search and emoji suggestions for my former employers. At previous jobs, I often sent personal messages to work friends filled with negativity towards my manager and company management. I can imagine Slack recommending specific emojis every time a specific CEO is mentioned.
However, as funny as the idea is, the whole situation serves as a good reminder to employees everywhere: your private Slack messages aren’t actually private. Nothing you say on Slack—even in a private message—is private. Yes, Slack uses this information to train tools like this, but the company you work for can also access these private messages quite easily. I highly recommend using something that is not controlled by your company if you need to talk to that company. May I suggest Signal?