https:// WORKSPACE-NAME .slack.com/admin/permissions/feature-access/slack_ai

 

You're probably about to say, "But Phil, Salesforce lets you control who gets AI access! They even encourage you to fine-tune your settings before the 17th!"

That’s AI features.

But what about data access? Who exactly can see, store, or process what's behind the curtain?

Yes, there are toggles for features - but none of them clarify who or what actually accesses your messages, where that data is stored, how long it’s kept, or which model is watching. It’s a sprawling, labyrinthine panel of sliders and landmines - and I’m sure there are at least five ways to misread it and accidentally compromise your org’s privacy by the 17th.

And if Salesforce blocks third parties from doing anything even with the owner’s permission - then who, exactly, owns the data?

If you use Salesforce Slack, check your settings - they might look different from ours at Adafruit. That’s because we only discovered a hidden opt-out option after emailing a secret Salesforce address to disable something not labeled "AI" - but “machine learning.” That setting doesn’t appear alongside the others, so now we’re wondering: how many more buried toggles are there? How many more secret requests do you have to know to make?

We asked our rep. Another one jumped in, promised a call, then ghosted us - but not before dropping this gem:

"AI is all around us, but let me just message my Slack Agent to lay off you" - Human(?) Account Executive | Slack, a Salesforce company

Not going to put the Account Executive's name because it may not even be him (I asked as we emailed if it was an LLM for some of the responses to our questions). 

This same week, a company we use for website testing was acquired - and suddenly, their former account executive’s email address started messaging using... Salesforce. The messages blended casual personal banter with discount offers, written as if they were still the original person. It’s not just confusing - it’s unsettling. Especially when the CEO of Salesforce has publicly stated that this level of automated, AI-personalized outreach is exactly the goal. Good work everyone, we did it!

Salesforce CEO Claims Half of the Company's Work Is Now Done by AI - Gizmodo.

In January 2023 Benioff announced the mass dismissal of approximately 7,000 Salesforce employees via a two-hour all-hands meeting over a call, a course of action he later admitted had been a 'bad idea'.As of 2024, Salesforce is one of the biggest employers in San Francisco and the anchor tenant of Salesforce Tower, the tallest building in San Francisco - wikipedia.org.

wed jul 2 3:04pm et - ok, and here’s where i need to stop for a bit to work on our shows for tonight (show and tell, and ask an engineer)...

if you got this far, there’s more later, but here’s the part where - after maybe a dozen emails of getting nowhere - i tried something different. i gave a specific and personal example that always hurts to type. limor is ok with us talking about it. maybe something good can come from sharing it. hey, open-source time.

adafruit has about 100 people. we don’t monitor email. we don’t track what employees do on slack, we try to not have any logs, it's how we want to do things. over the last 10+ years, people have met here, families have started. limor and i talk a lot, and i’m sure others do too - about miscarriages, about pain, about joy, about everything. for those who know limor and i, you don't know we've been trying to start a family for the last 5 years, a lot of failures, a miracle, and maybe more ...

we just want anyone using these “tools” to have control over what’s listening - because that’s what this is. it’s eavesdropping. Do you own your data or does Salesforce Slack, go ahead and try to ask your Account Executive too.

a lot is going to happen with “ai” and tools like slack which is a funnel for salesforce. this is probably the moment to decide what ai-to-human and human-to-ai privacy actually means. who owns that data? for us, it means setting something - anything - for-sure, so it’s not listening and turning heartbreak into a sales pitch, a learn more link, barfed up text in the all company channel, just let us opt out.

besides! if anyone’s going to monetize our pain, it’s going to be us first.

more later.