Employers want your Slack DMs to be public so AI can learn from them

Companies are encouraging employees to use public Slack channels instead of private messages so AI agents can access updates on products, earnings and strategy, the Wall Street Journal reports. The thinking is that AI works better with more up-to-date context, allowing it to analyze information, answer questions, make recommendations, create presentations and write code. Foster said he encourages employees to default to public messaging when possible.

Zapier has promoted public Slack channels for years to help new hires learn from past discussions, but AI has made that institutional knowledge even more valuable. The company tracks how often employees post publicly, and Foster has turned it into a friendly competition among executives. He recently posted 79 percent of his messages publicly, while the chief marketing officer reached 98 percent.

Foster told the WSJ that about 80 percent – not a perfect 100 percent – could be a reasonable target for many leaders. Zapier is also recording many virtual meetings and uploading notes about key discussions and decisions to Slack, giving AI even more workplace information to search and analyze. Foster said employees are not expected to read everything that appears in public chats, and that doing so “would not be a smart use of your time,” especially when AI can summarize.

But the push to make workplace chats accessible to AI comes with privacy concerns. UC Berkeley professor Mathijs De Vaan warns that employees’ messages could potentially be used to train AI models, while knowing conversations are accessible could make workers less comfortable brainstorming or speaking freely in private chats. Some working MBA students told De Vaan that their employers are encouraging public messaging because private chats can contain valuable information that helps AI systems work more effectively.

Salesforce, which owns Slack, is also embracing the trend. Joe Inzerillo, Salesforce’s president of enterprise and AI technology, said having more information stored in one place gives AI more fuel to drive innovation. The company says channel use has grown as companies increasingly work with AI agents.

It has also introduced group chats where employees and AI agents can collaborate on coding. The approach is also gaining traction at newer AI companies. At Aurelian, which develops software to coach 911 dispatchers and automate nonemergency calls, founder Max Keenan said he has recently “gone to war” against private workplace direct messages.