Slack is turning Slackbot into an AI assistant

Slack is testing an update for Slackbot that transforms it into an AI assistant. Presently, it operates as a tool for delivering 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.

“Slackbot today is fairly rudimentary,” Rob Seaman, the chief product officer of Slack at Salesforce, tells The Verge. “But what we’ve done is we’ve actually rebuilt it from the ground up as a personalized AI companion.”

As part of the pilot, Slackbot will appear as an icon next to the search bar at the top of the workspace. Clicking into 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 on a project.” The new Slackbot will draw from your conversations, files, and workspace to provide personalized assistance.

In a demo seen by The Verge, Slack showed how the AI-upgraded Slackbot can perform more complex tasks, such as organizing a product’s launch plan inside a Canvas by gathering information across different Slack channels, as well as help create a social media campaign using a brand’s tone.

But what seems even more helpful is the new Slackbot’s ability to search through a workspace using natural language. That means if you’re looking for a document but can’t nail down the specific keyword it was attached to, you can ask Slackbot something like “Find me the document that Jay shared in our last meeting.” It can also tap into Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to coordinate and schedule meetings with colleagues. 

This adds to the other AI-powered features Slack has integrated into the platform, which can already summarize threads and channels as well as decode company jargon. “We’ll keep putting those little touches there where they make sense, to save users a click,” Seaman said when asked about the future of these features. Slackbot’s existing features — like its automated messages or custom functions in response to commands — will remain available as well.

Companies can choose to opt out of using an AI Slackbot, but individuals in the workspace can’t. Slack’s AI features operate through Amazon Web Services’ virtual private cloud, “meaning that no data leaves the firewall, no data is used in the training of the models at all,” according to Seaman.

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