AI Labs Are Fueling a Wild Market for Your Emails and Slack DMs

Key Points:

• AI companies are aggressively purchasing anonymized workplace data, including Slack messages and internal documents, from businesses to train AI models, with offers often expiring within 48 hours and reaching six-figure sums.
• The market for business data is rapidly expanding, projected to grow from under $1 billion in 2023 to $6.5 billion by 2027, driven by demand from AI giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic seeking to automate white-collar work.
• Many employees and small business owners are unaware their data is being sold, raising ethical and privacy concerns, especially as some companies harvest employee data without clear consent, leading to internal revolts and regulatory scrutiny.
• Brokers liken the data rush to an oil boom, targeting companies rich in operational data but lacking awareness of its value, often pressuring them with quick, high-value offers that may undercompensate the data owners.
• The surge in data sales has sparked new cybersecurity risks, including illicit sales of stolen codebases, and increased calls for stronger data protection laws as employee digital footprints become a valuable asset in the AI economy.