OpenAI to Reportedly Begin Testing ChatGPT Connectors for Slack and Google Drive

OpenAI will reportedly soon begin the testing phase of a new ChatGPT feature that will allow the chatbot to connect with other platforms. As per the report, the feature is dubbed ChatGPT Connectors and will be available to the platform’s Teams subscribers. It is said that at launch, the tool will be able to connect with Google Drive for Workspace and the enterprise communications platform Slack. The feature will essentially allow ChatGPT to sync with the internal data of the platform and answer user queries based on that knowledge base.

OpenAI to Reportedly Test ChatGPT Connectors

According to a TechCrunch report, the company will soon start testing this new feature for ChatGPT Teams subscribers. It is said to be aimed as an enterprise tool that connects with third-party databases and communication platforms to enable users to fetch information from there and answer queries about them.

Based on a document viewed by the publication, the beta testing of the ChatGPT Connectors feature will soon begin. The feature will reportedly first work with Google Drive and Slack, and then it could be expanded to Microsoft’s SharePoint and Box. The Teams-exclusive feature is said to be able to collect text data from files, presentations, spreadsheets, and Slack conversations.

ChatGPT Connectors is said to be powered by a version of the GPT-4o AI model that can be grounded to the “internal knowledge” of the connected platform. All users in a participating ChatGPT Team workspace can reportedly gain access to the model via OpenAI’s chatbot.

One concern of the feature could be privacy. As per the report, the custom GPT-4o AI model searches through the internal database and creates a search index by syncing an encrypted copy of the files and conversations on OpenAI’s severs. Currently, it is not known how long the files will be stored and who might be able to access these.

ChatGPT Connectors will reportedly also show sources for related information that was not directly used to answer the query. This button is said to be placed at the bottom of each response. The AI model is also said to be able to access external information from the Internet and the model’s training data.

The internal document reportedly highlights that the feature will “fully respect” Slack and Google Drive permissions. Additionally, the feature is said to only be able to process text. Images, audio, or video files in Google Drive will not be supported. Further, it reportedly also cannot access Slack’s DMs or group messages, and can only be connected to channels.

OpenAI is said to be asking companies that wish to participate in the beta test to provide 100 documents and Slack channel conversations. The AI firm said the information will not be used to directly train the AI model but might be used “as input to synthetic data generation,” which might then be used for the model’s training.