As a corporate communication platform, Slack has evolved into a primary repository for organizational knowledge. However, accessing this information has posed challenges with traditional search tools. To address this issue, Slack has introduced new features aimed at enhancing accessibility, including an AI-powered search tool and the capability to summarize channel content.
Noah Weiss, Slack’s chief product officer, highlights how the platform naturally accumulates business data in a casual and unstructured manner. The key challenge lies in extracting this valuable yet hidden knowledge. Weiss emphasizes the significance of the latest generative AI capabilities in deciphering years’ worth of data analysis on the platform, enabling a new level of intelligence to be derived.
In May last year, Slack unveiled its integration of generative AI during the Salesforce World Tour in New York City, introducing SlackGPT tailored for content within the Slack ecosystem. The recent announcement focuses on leveraging this technology more effectively. Channel summarization feature aids employees in catching up after absences or swiftly grasping the essence of lengthy conversations. By requesting a summary, Slack’s AI model generates a concise overview of discussed topics, complete with references to demonstrate the model’s reasoning process—an integral aspect of the feature’s design.
Moreover, users can now pose questions naturally, akin to ChatGPT, but with Slack-specific content. For instance, a user could inquire about ‘Project Gizmo,’ prompting SlackGPT to provide a sourced response, enhancing transparency and trust. Each response undergoes a quality assessment by users, enabling the model to refine its accuracy while allowing system engineers to monitor its performance.
Although specific details about the underlying model were not disclosed, Weiss mentioned its composition of diverse large language models. The meticulous fine-tuning of these models for Slack’s data and prompt engineering significantly influenced their efficacy.
The Slack AI search and summarization feature is an optional add-on for enterprise plans, incurring additional costs beyond standard licensing fees. While pricing specifics were not disclosed, the product is currently available in U.S. and U.K. English, with plans to support additional languages in the near future.
