After Reddit, Slack uses your data and conversations to train its AI without your consent, how can you refuse?

Slack uses data from its users, messages and files to develop its artificial intelligence tools. A decision that angers users, who are automatically registered.

Some discovered it at home, working remotely, at the same time as the COVID-19 pandemic, others were already using it in the office, but Slack was able to find a place in our machines. Like Discord and Microsoft Teams, Slack is one of the most popular collaborative tools.

While it underwent a facelift in August 2023, with new features and a more pleasant environment, without warning, Slack began to use the conversations and documents of its users to train its AI. No more private life, confidential exchanges now serve as a learning basis for the company’s algorithms. Enough to annoy its users, who had no say in this “force enlistment” in an AI training program. In fact, neither notice nor request for consent was given to them.

Slack enlists its customers in AI training without their consent

By default, Slack messages, files, and user data feed into the company’s machine learning models. Features like channel suggestions, search results or auto-completion rely on this valuable content. A default choice criticized, customers not having been consulted beforehand.

On . Slack responded by spitting out its privacy policy, and confirming that indeed, its users’ content was used for training purposes for AI-based tools or applications. But, as if to justify the absence of consent, or rather, consent by default, Slack argued that this data only resulted in free AI tools.

To top it off, if users want their data not to be used, they cannot request it, but must go through the hierarchy. In fact, only workspace administrators can request the exclusion of their data by email. No simple option is offered to individual users, unhappy with this unilateral decision. “ A privacy mess », denounces a lawyer.

Before Slack, Squarespace, WordPress and Reddit also trained their AI with their users’ data

Unfortunately, leveraging user data for AI is not new. Squarespace, for example, collects, unless opposed, content published on its websites for training purposes. A default choice that raises questions, there too. As for WordPress, since February 2024, it has sold content created by its users to AI laboratories.

More recently, Reddit partnered with OpenAI to provide access to conversations on its popular forum. An agreement which follows that signed with Google a few months earlier, worth 60 million euros.

The search giant can thus exploit data from the community site to perfect its AI models.

If the approach seems profitable for companies, at least in the short term, respect for the privacy of users and especially the notion of consent, so dear to the GDPR, are taking a terrible toll. As a reminder, Article 6 of the General Data Protection Regulation states that the processing of personal data must be legitimate, which means that it must be based on consent or necessity. It seems that on consent, Slack crosses outside the nails.

Source : PC Mag, Slack