Slack’s new generative AI features now available for all paid customers

Salesforce Inc. said today that its popular collaboration tool Slack is getting some new generative artificial intelligence capabilities.

The previously announced Slack AI features are being made available today to all paid customers, and it’s also expanding its language support from English to Spanish and Japanese, with more languages coming soon.

Slack AI provides what Salesforce describes as a trusted and intuitive generative AI experience that’s natively built into Slack. The main benefit of Slack AI is that it makes it easier for users to access the knowledge hosted within what is one of the most widely used enterprise communication platforms.

It promises to make life much easier for anyone who uses Slack on a day-to-day basis, with channel recaps instantly delivering highlights from any Slack channel, meaning users can quickly find the important details of their collaborative conversations. They also help users save time on tedious tasks such as drafting status reports based on what has been said in Slack.

With today’s launch in general availability, Slack AI boasts features including a new recap feature that delivers a kind of “daily morning digest” that contains summaries of all of the channels a user needs to keep up with. Once the user adds a channel to their recap, they’ll be able to access a digest that’s updated daily, summarizing all of the key points that were discussed and any action items.

Also new is the ability for users to search through Slack content with conversational questions and receive personalized answers. According to the company, the answers will be clear and concise and contain direct citations to the relevant Slack messages, so users can verify the information is correct and dive deeper into the context.

It will also provide conversation summaries with highlights from accessible channels and threads. This allows users to catch up on unread messages more quickly, and summarize what’s been said in the last seven days, or on specified dates.

Slack AI’s capabilities have been available in preview since last year. The company said its early adopters are saving an average of 97 minutes per user per week – time that would otherwise be spent reading through the history of various chats and channels.

To illustrate how Slack AI can benefit enterprise workers, Salesforce spoke to early adopters such as Wayfair Inc. and Beyond Better Foods LLC to understand the ways they’re using the platform to their advantage.

Wayfair has been using Slack since 2016 and was one of the first customers to adopt Slack AI when it first became available in pilot, employing it to help its workers distill collected data more efficiently. Its employees also make use of the enhanced search capability to easily ask questions and find concise answers, eliminating the need to scroll through lengthy conversations in the relevant channels.

“We want to find information quickly so people can spend less time catching up and more time delivering,” said Wayfair’s director of employee tech, Asad Rahman. “With Slack AI’s compelling features, we’re empowered to do just that.”

The healthy foods brand Beyond Better Foods uses Slack AI’s enhanced search capabilities to find quick answers for questions about logistics planning, which needs to be carefully planned due to the perishable nature of its products.

“Slack is crucial for us. The enhanced search capabilities of Slack AI have been really helpful to fast-track answers, especially when it comes to logistics,” said Beyond Better Foods Vice President of Operations Andy Kung. “When I need to get my CEO a fast answer at 2 p.m. on a Friday, I can use Slack AI’s search function. I’ve only been using Slack AI for about a month, but it’s already helped me quickly find answers countless times, and is saving me at least 30 minutes a day.”

Slack AI is available now as an add-on for all paid plans, priced at $10 per user per month, and to ensure customers get value from that investment, Salesforce said it will continue to expand the service’s capabilities.

In the coming months, Slack AI’s search and summarization features will be able to tap into more data sources, the company said, including relevant files, Slack applications, canvases and clips, adding to the knowledge and context it can access. For instance, Slack AI will soon be able to deliver a summary of the key takeaways from Slack Huddles, which are informal audio and video calls between team members. In this way, quick discussions can be transformed into next steps, the company said.

In addition, Salesforce plans to integrate its conversational assistant Einstein Copilot with Slack AI. Einstein Copilot is a tool for users of Salesforce’s flagship customer relationship management platform, and helps surface insights and provide answers to questions by leveraging the data within companies’ CRM platforms. By integrating Einstein Copilot with Slack, users will be able to talk directly to their CRM without actually having to access the platform directly.

Images: Slack