Dive Brief:
- Slack is rolling out a native generative AI experience to enterprise customers this week, the company said Wednesday. Slack AI offers access to several previously announced capabilities, such as thread summaries and channel recaps.
- Enterprise customers can now gather AI-generated summaries for specific threads or channels when they return from PTO or need to catch up quickly. AI will also improve search results within the interface, enabling users to look up definitions and information related to enterprise or industry-specific terms and project titles.
- The AI upgrades are offered as an opt-in only, add-on enterprise offering. Pricing details are not public, Jackie Rocca, Slack’s VP, product, AI, told CIO Dive.
Dive Insight:
Slack entered a redesign period in August and doubled down in September with expanded automation offerings. At the same time, the company began piloting Slack AI with select customers.
The company trialed Slack AI features with thousands of testers since September, including Uber and Anthropic. Slack estimated that teams using the capabilities saved 97 minutes per week on average.
The company built the features to match users’ flow of work and sidestep the need for model training and prompt-engineering skills, Rocca said
Now, it’s up to enterprises to see where their teams find value.
Businesses weren’t satisfied with their progress toward generative AI goals last year as hype outpaced ROI. Leaders have returned to the table this year with stronger strategies and more experience, eager to move deserving pilots to production.
As part of the increased focus on AI, leaders are also paying more attention to vendor plans and policies. AI-savvy CIOs are assessing vendor product roadmaps as a way to prioritize and redirect internal development resources to tools or capabilities providers aren't targeting.
If vendor-developed solutions don’t meet enterprise standards or desires, businesses aren’t afraid to look elsewhere.
Data associated with Slack AI will remain on the platform and within Slack's infrastructure, Rocca said. Slack’s AI capabilities are powered by large language models hosted in the company’s virtual private cloud.
The company plans to roll out Slack AI in phases, expanding access to small business customers in the coming weeks.
“We want to make sure that there’s great performance there and we have the right capacity to serve all of our customers,” Rocca said.
Correction: This article has been updated to reflect Slack AI does not require model training.
