Slack GPT brings native generative AI to chat app

Slack is working on new generative AI features that provide users with automated summaries of conversations and AI assisted writing natively within its collaboration app.

Slack had already discussed plans to connect its popular software to large language models (LLMs) offered by third-parties, announcing an integration with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (currently in beta) in March, and Anthropic’s Claude, available now. It expanded on those plans Thursday at parent company Salesforce’s World Tour event with the unveiling of Slack GPT, which will see generative AI integrated directly into the Slack app in a variety of ways.

The goal is to improve sharing and creation within Slack and tie it in to Salesforce’s products more effectively, the company said.

Slack’s popularity as a workplace collaboration platform provides it with some important advantages when incorporating generative AI, said Ali Rayl, Slack’s vice president of customer experience.

“We think that Slack has a unique advantage when it comes to generative AI,” she said. “First and foremost, we hold an enormous amount of institutional knowledge: everything that your entire team has done in channels for the years that you’ve been using Slack, it’s in your archives, it’s all at your fingertips. That’s an enormous body of knowledge for us to tap into.

“Given the reliance we all have on chat-based collaboration, leveraging generative AI to summarize and automate what we have to do now — labor intensive scrolling around, switching from chat stream to chat stream, uncovering the key people in those endless threads — these types of initial applications of generative are helpful advancements,” she said.

One focus for Slack GPT is conversation summaries.  For example, a user facing lots of unread messages when returning to a team channel conversation can click a button for an overview of what’s been discussed while they were away, enabling them to quickly catch up without scrolling through numerous posts. It will be possible to do the same with transcriptions of Slack Huddle, the company’s lightweight voice meeting tool.

Another feature under development is AI-assisted writing. Many people already use ChatGPT for this purpose, whether it’s to suggest an email response or make an existing draft more formal in tone. Rather than copy/pasting this information to and from ChatGPT, Slack will enable these options via a small dropdown menu.

Slack GPT can also create information in Canvas documents. “We envision a world where AI can start populating canvases for you,” said Rayl. This would mean generating text in the document, adding profile cards of those involved in a particular project, and including relevant videos and documents.

Slack also sees ways to add LLMs from the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic into its no-code Workflow Builder to create more powerful automations.

Rayl gave an example of an “AI-powered lead response.” This could start with a new lead coming into the Salesforce app, which then kicks off a process where the relevant Slack team channel is notified with any background information about the customer and an email is generated in Gmail for review before it’s sent. “This is one really quick workflow that anybody can build that really shaves off the amount of time from a salesperson getting a lead to actually reaching out to that customer,” she said.

The ability to integrate generative AI with the Workflow Builder is slated to be available this summer.