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The logo for Slack is displayed on a trading post monitor at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), June 20, 2019 in New York City.

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Buzzy chatbot technology is coming to Slack in a new way: Slack GPT, an in-app tool that allows users to shorten and adjust message tone, summarize missed messages in channels, assist with writing, take notes on calls or “huddles,” and more. 

For example, you might ask the chatbot to take note of everything that was said on a Slack group call. Slack GPT can also summarize the dozens of messages you’ve missed in a specific chat group while you were out of the office.

Salesforce, which owns the workplace messaging app, announced the news Thursday.

Ali Rayl, Slack’s senior vice president of product, told CNBC she estimates that the AI chatbot tools will be rolled out within the next year but declined to give more specifics on the features’ rollout timeline.  

Slack GPT

Slack

“We’ve seen a ton of interest, honestly … We have so much information [that] we have a unique advantage here,” Rayl told CNBC. “All the messages your company has sent in all of your channels – that’s valuable … How can we take generative AI and make that more valuable to a company?”

Rayl added, “We are interested in going into this territory, but also the market is pulling us there regardless.” 

The news follows Salesforce’s decision in March to greenlight two chatbots, ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, as external apps for use on Slack, but they’re limited in capacity compared with the native features announced Thursday.

Salesforce also announced no-code features it will offer to professionals starting this summer. These include tools for customer service workers, such as AI-generated responses to customers and case summaries; tools for developers and IT workers, such as automating incident management to determine the root cause of an issue; and tools for marketers, such as auto-generating campaign copy and images. 

Customer chats and information won’t be stored or used as training data for the AI tools, Rayl said. 

“[We don’t want to] just toss something out and say, ‘Yeah, the AI hallucinates sometimes, sorry,'” Rayl said. “We’re doing some really thoughtful product design.” 

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China blacklists major chip research firm TechInsights following report on Huawei

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China blacklists major chip research firm TechInsights following report on Huawei

In this photo illustration a Huawei logo is displayed on a smartphone with a Chinese flag in the background.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

Beijing has banned semiconductor research firm TechInsights from working with or receiving data from Chinese entities, in a move that could add to the opaqueness of the country’s chip industry. 

China’s Commerce Ministry, citing national security concerns, announced Thursday that TechInsights was designated an “unreliable entity,” which prohibits Chinese individuals or organizations from sharing information with the Canadian-based company. 

TechInsights is well known in the global tech space for its in-depth coverage of Chinese-made chips and was among the first to report breakthroughs by companies like Huawei Technologies.

Beijing’s crackdown on TechInsights came less than a week after the firm revealed that a breakdown of Huawei’s latest artificial intelligence chips found components sourced from outside mainland China.

TechInsights didn’t respond to a request for comment from CNBC outside normal office hours, while Huawei didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry about TechInsights’ report.   

The findings by TechInsights about Huawei’s latest “Ascend” AI chips were consistent with those from other research firms like SemiAnalysis, which said that the Chinese company relies on technology from memory chipmakers like Samsung Electronics and contract chipmaker Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC). 

These companies are under U.S. export controls, restricting them from selling their most advanced technologies to Chinese customers. Moreover, Huawei has been on a U.S. trade blacklist since 2019, barring chip makers that do business with the U.S. from working directly with it. 

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In response, Beijing and its chipmakers have stepped up efforts to build a self-sufficient semiconductor supply chain. 

Huawei, one of China’s leading players in these efforts, has been developing alternatives to U.S. chip giant, Nvidia, though TechInsights’ latest findings may be seen by some as a knock on such efforts. 

Despite its prominence in China’s chip space, few details are disclosed about Huawei’s chipmaking efforts outside of what third-party research firms uncover.

For example, reports have said that Huawei works closely with China’s leading chip foundry SMIC — a competitor of TSMC — though both companies have been silent about any collaboration since Huawei was placed on the U.S. trade blacklist.

Last year, TechInsights reportedly found that a Huawei product contained a chip component from TSMC, triggering questions about the effectiveness of U.S. export controls. The research firm’s latest findings on Huawei’s AI chip could further fuel such concerns.

Analysts say Chinese chip companies have exploited loopholes in U.S. restrictions and drawn on stockpiles of imported chips and components before certain restrictions kicked in.

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Microsoft engineer resigns over cloud business from Israeli military

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Microsoft engineer resigns over cloud business from Israeli military

Demonstrators hold a banner reading “Liberated Zone” during a protest at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington, on Aug. 19, 2025. Microsoft Corp. employees rallied at the company’s Redmond, Washington, headquarters in an effort to ratchet up pressure on the software maker to stop doing business with Israel over its war in Gaza.

David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

A Microsoft engineer is resigning after 13 years at the software giant, claiming the company continues to sell cloud services to the Israeli military and that executives won’t discuss the war in Gaza.

Scott Sutfin-Glowski, a principal software engineer, informed colleagues at Microsoft on Thursday that this will be his last week at the company.

“I can no longer accept enabling what may be the worst atrocities of our time,” he wrote.

In the letter, he referred to a February Associated Press article that said the Israeli military had at least 635 Microsoft subscriptions, and he claimed the vast majority of them remain active.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Sutfin-Glowski’s announced departure comes a day after President Donald Trump said Israel and Hamas committed to the first phase of a peace plan two years into the latest conflict. The AP reported on Thursday, citing government officials, that the U.S. is sending roughly 200 troops to Israel to help support the ceasefire deal.

The conflict has been a matter of ongoing tension at Microsoft.

For months, employees have protested the company’s cloud business from the Israeli military. Five employees were fired.

In September, Microsoft said it had stopped providing certain services to a division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, though it didn’t provide specifics. That decision came after Microsoft investigated an August report from The Guardian saying the Israeli Defense Forces’ Unit 8200 had built a system for tracking Palestinians’ phone calls.

Sutfin-Glowski said the company cut off communication systems that allowed employees to bring up their concerns regarding the Israeli military’s use of Microsoft products.

Outside a building at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on Thursday, employees and community members opened up banners calling on the company to drop ties with Israel, according to a statement from No Azure for Apartheid. The group has been asking Microsoft to listen to the more than 1,500 employees who petitioned the company to endorse a ceasefire.

“Today, the ceasefire in Gaza finally takes effect after two years of genocide, but the atrocities, human rights abuses, war crimes, apartheid, and occupation continue,” Sutfin-Glowski wrote.

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Tesla faces U.S. auto safety probe after reports FSD ran red lights, caused collisions

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Tesla faces U.S. auto safety probe after reports FSD ran red lights, caused collisions

The tablet of the new Tesla Model 3.

Matteo Della Torre | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Tesla is facing a federal investigation into possible safety defects with FSD, its partially automated driving system that is also known as Full Self-Driving (Supervised).

Media, vehicle owner and other incident reports to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration showed that in 44 separate incidents, Tesla drivers using FSD said the system caused them to run a red light, steer into oncoming traffic or commit other traffic safety violations leading to collisions, including some that injured people.

In a notice posted to the agency’s website on Thursday, NHTSA said the investigation concerns “all Tesla vehicles that have been equipped with FSD (Supervised) or FSD (Beta),” which is an estimated 2,882,566 of the company’s electric cars.

Tesla cars, even with FSD engaged, require a human driver ready to brake or steer at any time.

The NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation opened a Preliminary Evaluation to “assess whether there was prior warning or adequate time for the driver to respond to the unexpected behavior” by Tesla’s FSD, or “to safely supervise the automated driving task,” among other things.

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The ODI’s review will also assess “warnings to the driver about the system’s impending behavior; the time given to drivers to respond; the capability of FSD to detect, display to the driver, and respond appropriately to traffic signals; and the capability of FSD to detect and respond to lane markings and wrong-way signage.”

Tesla did not respond to a request for comment on the new federal probe. The company released an updated version of FSD this week, version 14.1, to customers.

For years, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has promised investors that Tesla would someday be able to turn their existing electric vehicles into robotaxis, capable of generating income for owners while they sleep or go on vacation, with a simple software update.

That hasn’t happened yet, and Tesla has since informed owners that future upgrades will require new hardware as well as software releases.

Tesla is testing a Robotaxi-brand ride-hailing service in Texas and elsewhere, but it includes human safety drivers or valets on board who either conduct the drives or manually intervene as needed.

In February this year, Musk and President Donald Trump slashed NHTSA staff as part of a broader effort to reduce the federal workforce, impacting the agency’s ability to investigate vehicle safety and regulate autonomous vehicles, The Washington Post first reported.

Read NHTSA’s Tesla FSD traffic safety violations investigation filings here.

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