Slack announced its intention to add generative AI features in September 2023, and today the messaging app company launched its AI support. Slack's new generative AI features are designed to increase worker productivity through message consolidation and intelligent searches. (Figure A). For IT and cybersecurity professionals, Slack summaries can offer quick looks at incident reports or tickets before workers drill down into individual incidents.
Figure A
Additionally, Slack announced personalized channel overview across multiple channels and the Salesforce Einstein Copilot integration is coming soon. Summary summaries and the Einstein Copilot integration for Salesforce CRM could increase productivity by saving time and organizing information automatically, Slack suggests.
Slack AI summarizes messages, adds flexibility to searches, and more
The three Slack AI features available as of February 14 are:
- Topic summariesthat shorten long conversations and include links to the original conversation. (Figure B).
- Channel summaries, which generate highlights from multiple selected channels in a selected date range and summarize them. They are especially useful when an employee has been absent, Slack noted.
- AI-powered searchwhich allows users to ask natural language questions about Slack conversations.
Figure B
The AI functions run on a proprietary large language model hosted on Slack. Customer data is isolated and is not used to train other models.
“We're all looking to drive ROI for our organizations,” Slack VP of Product Jackie Rocca told TechRepublic in a phone interview. “These features can save you time, from channel overviews to searches, but they can also better equip you to make business and customer decisions. You don't need to spend so much time being a digital detective trying to put the pieces together. “You can simply ask a question in real time, leverage all the knowledge in your organization, and better prepare yourself for any job that comes your way.”
Additionally, Slack announced AI-powered apps from Notion and other members of the Slack partner ecosystem. These apps are located in the Slack app directory.
How can I get Slack AI?
Slack AI is a paid add-on to the Enterprise Grid subscription; Organizations will need to contact their Slack sales reps for exact pricing. Slack expects more pricing information to be available when AI features roll out to non-Enterprise Grid plans in the future.
Slack AI is only available in US and UK English. Slack plans to expand Slack AI to languages other than English at an unspecified date.
SEE: NIST established the US AI Safety Consortium in February to create standards around AI safety. (Technological Republic)
Upcoming AI features in Slack
Slack didn't specify when more AI features might be rolled out, but plans are in the works for personalized digests with summaries of channels that an employee may not actively follow but wants to keep an eye on and more AI-powered app integrations from the partner ecosystem are in the works. from Slack. .
Among those AI-powered app integrations will be Einstein Copilot, the generative AI assistant for Salesforce CRM. Einstein Copilot on Slack will be able to answer questions in Slack based on customer data securely shared with Salesforce CRM.
“Customers have found custom use cases unique just to their organizations,” Rocca said. “We really want to provide that open platform where you either build something internally or it's something you're partnering with. Perplexity AI comes to Slack; Box has its artificial intelligence solutions on Slack. So regardless of what tools you're using, we want Slack to be easy to access (and) the command center for all your AI tools.”
Slack Competitors with AI Features
There are many Slack competitors, including Microsoft Teams, Google's Chat, ClickUp, Rocket.Chat, and Mattermost. Here's a brief look at the AI features these Slack alternatives offer.
- The Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription includes generative AI features for Teams, such as meeting summaries and suggested follow-up tasks. Some of these Microsoft 365 AI features may be specific to certain subscriptions, such as Teams Premium or Copilot for Sales and Service.
- Google's Gemini can integrate with Google Chat (depending on the user's account type), providing message summaries and queries in natural language.
- ClickUp offers AI summary and generative features, such as changing the tone of messages or generating action items.
- Rocket.Chat, an open source security-focused chat platform, does not offer built-in AI features, but you can access ChatGPT through app integration.
- Mattermost, which is best suited for technical and operations teams in highly secure industries, does not offer built-in AI capabilities, but can access GPT-4 or local large language models through an AI sandbox.
