Slack, a leading platform for team communication and collaboration owned by Salesforce, has announced Slack GPT, aimed at brining native generative AI technology into Slack to enhance workplace productivity. The announcement comes as tech giants Microsoft and Google have already begun integrating generative AI tools into their communications apps and workspaces.
While users can already access conversational AI agents like Anthropic’s Claude as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT in Slack today, the company has bigger plans. They envision Slack GPT as a deeply integrated ecosystem of AI tools and features that are designed to help users work more efficiently, learn quickly, and communicate effectively.
To help companies successfully leverage generative AI, Slack has proposed three key components:
- An AI-ready platform to integrate and automate with your language model of choice, whether you use partner-built apps like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude or build your own custom integration
- A set of AI features built directly in Slack, including AI-powered conversation summaries and writing assistance
- A new Einstein GPT app that lets you surface AI-powered customer insights from trusted Salesforce Customer 360 data and Data Cloud
"Generative AI has enormous potential to redefine how work is done. The real power of Slack GPT is it enables AI to act on valuable data from a company’s most trusted resource: its own internal knowledge.” - Lidiane Jones, CEO of Slack
Last month, Slack released its "next-generation platform", an impressive re-architecture of the product that enables users to automate and integrate anything with Slack. This new platform will serve as the foundation for integrating even custom AI models.
Later this summer, the company plans to release Workflow Builder, a built-in no-code automation tool, that users will be able to add generative AI prompts to as one of the steps in your workflow.
Slack previewed some exciting future capabilities of Slack GPT, such as AI-powered conversation summaries and AI writing assistance which will be integrated into Slack's message composer and canvas, offering users the ability to refine their drafts, adjust tone, and distill content more efficiently.
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Salesforce is being deliberately cautious in its adoption of AI and says it's committed to involving its customers in the development process. By engaging with users early and frequently to pilot these features, Salesforce aims to ensure a responsible and well-tested rollout of AI capabilities across their platforms.