Slack turns Slackbot into an AI assistant

Slack is testing an update to Slackbot that turns it into an AI assistant. Nowadays, it serves as a tool to provide reminders and notifications. With the update, Slackbot can create custom plans tailored to your workspace, sift through a mountain of messages, gather information from a range of Slack channels, and more.

“Today’s Slackbot is fairly primitive,” says Rob Seaman, senior vice president of enterprise products at Slack. Edge. “But what we did is we actually rebuilt it from the ground up to become an AI-powered personal companion.”

As part of the beta program, Slackbot will appear as an icon next to the search bar at the top of the workspace. Tapping it will open a DM-like panel on the right side of the screen where you can enter prompts like “What are my priorities for today?” Or “Find the latest updates for the project.” The new Slackbot will leverage your conversations, files, and workspace to provide personalized assistance.

In the show he watched EdgeSlack demonstrated how an AI-enhanced Slackbot can perform more complex tasks, such as organizing a product launch plan within Canvas by collecting information across different Slack channels, as well as helping create a social media campaign using a brand tone.

But what seems even more useful is Slackbot’s new ability to search the workspace using natural language. This means that if you’re searching for a document but can’t identify the specific keyword it’s attached to, you can ask Slackbot something like “Find me the document that Jay shared in our last meeting.” It can also take advantage of Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to coordinate and schedule meetings with colleagues.

This adds to the other AI-powered features that Slack has built into the platform, which can Topics and channels already summarized Besides Decipher company jargon. “We’ll continue to put those little touches where they make sense, saving users a click,” Seaman said when asked about the future of these features. Existing Slackbot features — such as automated messages or custom functionality to respond to commands — will also remain available.

Businesses can opt out of using AI Slackbot, but individuals in the workspace cannot. Slack’s AI features run through Amazon Web Services’ virtual private cloud, “which means no data leaves the firewall, and no data is ever used to train models,” according to Seaman.

The upgraded Slackbot is already available to 70,000 employees at Salesforce (Slack’s parent company), and the company is now testing it with other customers as well. It plans to introduce the new feature to everyone at the end of the year.