Slack GPT could attend Huddles so you don’t have to

With Slack GPT, natively integrated AI features are being developed for Slack that could help boost productivity without disrupting how users already interact with the platform. Some examples include directing the tone and length of messages composed directly in Slack and even attending Huddles on your behalf, summarizing them along with any unread messages you may have missed.

Introduced at the Salesforce World Tour event on Thursday, Slack GPT is a new generative AI experience that has three main focus points: the aforementioned natively integrated AI features, customizable automated workflows, and a dedicated Einstein GPT app for Slack. It’s going to be a while before any of these features are available to everyday Slack users, but today’s announcements at least provide a glimpse into what we can expect in the coming months.

Slack GPT will additionally provide users with enhanced tools for building customized workflows to automate tasks using simple prompts — no coding experience required. Teams can also choose to integrate large language model (LLM) apps like Anthropic’s Claude or OpenAI’s ChatGPT (currently in beta) into this process. Salesforce claims that Anthropic and OpenAI won’t use any of the data from their Slack apps to train their language models, though companies also have the option to integrate their own proprietary software or LLMs into the Slack ecosystem if privacy is a concern.

Finally, Einstein GPT — a generative AI assistant created by Salesforce — is also being adapted into a dedicated Slack app. As Einstein GPT can access live customer information from trusted Salesforce Customer 360 data and the Data Cloud, it could be integrated into Slack workflows to automatically notify teams of new leads or updates to ongoing sales projects. Salesforce dropped a cool $27.7 billion to acquire Slack back in 2021, so it’s little wonder that the company is developing ways to make the two platforms more cohesive.

“Generative AI has enormous potential to redefine how work is done and unlock significant business productivity,” said Lidiane Jones, CEO of Slack. “The real power of this technology is when AI can analyze and act on the most valuable data from a company’s most trusted resource — its own internal knowledge.”

There are currently no fixed release dates for any of these Slack GPT features. The new Workflow Builder is expected to arrive sometime “this summer,” and both the Einstein GPT app for Slack and Slack GPT’s native AI features are still in development.