Uncovering Slack’s Chat Chat AI Training Initiative, Requiring Manual Opt-Out, as Slack States Trained Model Not GenAI

Slack boasts a multitude of AI features that have been operational since the beginning of the year. At that time, it was stated that user chat data was not being used for training data, but the specific source of the training data was not disclosed.

Recently, Corey Quinn, the managing director of DuckBill Group, a cloud cost management platform, revealed a discovery in Slack, indicating that organizations could opt-out if they wished to exclude customer data from model training. To opt-out, the organization’s primary contact with Slack must email a request for opt-out, and Slack will then exempt the data from future model training.

In response to Quinn’s post, Slack stated that they have Machine Learning models used for recommending channels, emojis, and search results. Customers have the option to opt-out of having their data used for training these Machine Learning models. It is important to note that these models are not Generative AI, known as Slack AI, which Slack specifically uses to memorize or replicate customer data.

This issue prompted many users to respond to Slack’s post, suggesting that this feature should be opt-in for customers to enable, rather than opt-out by default, requiring an email request for exemption.

Source: PCMag

TLDR: Slack offers various AI features and recently allowed organizations to opt-out of using customer data for model training, sparking a debate on whether features should be opt-in instead of opt-out.