After conducting thorough testing for nearly a year, Slack, a platform under the ownership of Salesforce, has rolled out cutting-edge AI features specifically tailored for corporate users. These advancements are geared towards streamlining the processes of searching, summarizing, and querying information within their conversations.
To aid users in navigating the vast array of discussions within their Slack workspace, the platform has integrated an AI-powered search bot. This bot allows users to input queries in natural language, prompting the bot to provide relevant responses. The primary goal of this feature is to unearth information that may be challenging to uncover using traditional search tools.
Users can utilize the search bot to inquire about various topics, such as gaining more insights into specific projects, identifying individuals responsible for particular tasks, understanding established decisions or policies, and pinpointing subject matter experts within the organization. Moreover, users can rely on Slack’s AI to interpret unfamiliar acronyms without having to directly consult their colleagues.
This search functionality sifts through the ongoing conversations and dialogues within the workspace to address these open-ended queries while upholding privacy standards by refraining from disclosing private discussions among individuals. Slack affirms that it refrains from using customer data to train extensive language models and independently hosts all its machine learning technologies on its infrastructure.
In conjunction with the search bot, Slack has introduced two additional AI features: automatically generated summaries of channel conversations and threads. These summaries prove to be invaluable for employees returning from extended leaves or transitioning to new teams.
For users who choose not to solely rely on Slack’s AI or prefer to integrate it with other tools, the platform remains compatible with third-party applications such as Notion, PagerDuty, and the AI search bot Perplexity. These external apps can introduce their own machine learning capabilities where relevant.
Currently, the accessibility of Slack’s AI is restricted to paid add-ons for Enterprise plans in English, with plans for expansion to include additional languages and subscription tiers in the near future. CEO Denise Dresser envisions that these AI-driven features will significantly boost workforce efficiency and productivity.
Looking forward, Slack aims to enrich its chat application with more AI functionalities, including the incorporation of Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot assistant, to further enhance user experience and operational efficiency.
