Slack Launches Slack AI to Boost Worker Efficiency

Enterprise messaging platform Slack is debuting Slack AI, its artificial intelligence (AI) tool to help users find information more easily.

Slack AI is starting with a set of initial generative AI capabilities, including a search function that delivers personalized, intelligent responses to your questions, channel recaps that offer highlights from accessible channels, and thread summaries that condense longer conversations, Slack said in a Wednesday (Feb. 14) news release.

“These new native features are easy to use and require no training. They prioritize exactly what you need to know, when you need to know it,” Slack said in the release.

Slack CEO Denise Dresser noted the potential benefits of the new product.

“These new AI capabilities empower our customers to access the collective knowledge within Slack so they can work smarter, move faster, and spend their time on things that spark real innovation and growth,” Dresser said in a statement.

Slack said it will not use customer data to train large language models (LLMs) or share customer data with LLM providers. Slack AI runs on an in-house LLM, ensuring that user data stays within the company, per the release.

The company also added that it is building a native AI integration with Einstein Copilot, a new conversational AI assistant for Salesforce CRM, which owns Slack.

The rollout comes as more companies are looking within to build AI models to serve business needs.

As PYMNTS reported in December, according to a report by Quartz, although companies like Google, Amazon and OpenAI are building larger and larger AI models, companies may still find that they can adopt AI in a less costly way by focusing on specific applications.

Braden Hancock, chief technology officer of Snorkel AI, a company that refines AI models, spoke with Quartz. Hancock works with firms, many in the financial market, to build small AI-powered bots that do one task, such as providing customer service or helping with coding.

“There was maybe a moment early at the beginning of the year, right after ChatGPT came out, where people weren’t quite sure — like, oh my gosh, is this game over? Is AI just solved now?” Hancock said.

However, companies began to discover that ChatGPT’s enterprise applications were limited, and that the model had to first be modified.