Slack is adding ChatGPT. Here's what that means for users.

Artificial intelligence could create more jobs than it displaces

Salesforce is looking to tap the power of so-called generative artificial intelligence to enhance Slack, its widely used collaborative platform. The software maker announced this week it is integrating ChatGPT into Slack to help employees work more efficiently. 

"This will give customers new superpowers by helping them tap the collective knowledge of their organization's channel archives," Salesforce said.

The company's rollout of ChatGPT, which it is currently testing, comes as employers in a range of industries look for ways to use an emerging generation of AI tools able to search vast troves of text, images, audio and other data to produce content and answer queries. In January alone, internet searches for ChatGPT and related terms approached 83 million, according to Similarweb, a web-traffic analytics company.

Here's what ChatGPT will do for Slack users, according to Salesforce.

Summarize conversations

The ChatGPT app can provide short summaries of conversations from Slack channels or threads. Users can use this AI-powered feature to quickly get up to speed on what's happening in their workspace, Salesforce said.

Writing assistance 

An AI-powered writing tool can help users draft replies, meeting notes and status updates. 

Research 

ChatGPT's research tool will allow Slack customers to quickly explore any subject directly from the platform. For example, users can use the tool to research best practices for their businesses or identify potential customers for their sales initiatives, Salesforce said.

Despite ChatGPT's potential, privacy experts have raised concerns about opening corporate networks to AI, which is "trained" by being fed enormous amounts of data. The technology has also drawn criticism for providing faulty information and for its potential to introduce bias in searches.

Salesforce said its platform offers customers "granular controls" to manage third-party access to Slack data, minimizing the security risks. The company also notes that "any data that the app has permission to access" will not be fed to ChatGPT's language model for training the AI. 

Still, it remains unclear whether companies that sign up for Slack's ChatGPT beta will be able to set limits on what parts of their proprietary data the AI can use. Last year, for example, experts raised concerns that AI-powered selfie portrait apps like Lensa AI could inappropriately store and manipulate users' photos and hang on to their data.  

Elizabeth Napolitano

Elizabeth Napolitano is a freelance reporter at CBS MoneyWatch, where she covers business and technology news. She also writes for CoinDesk. Before joining CBS, she interned at NBC News' BizTech Unit and worked on the Associated Press' web scraping team.