Slack begins rolling out Slack AI…well, probably

Slack will soon begin rolling out what it calls “Slack AI” to its customers, featuring smart search, channel recaps, and summaries — and a number of caveats, too.

Slack has been trying to integrate AI into its conversational interface for about a year now, and some of this sounds pretty familiar. Slack was talking about a “Slack GPT” app last spring, with the eventual rollout of a sales-based AI, Einstein GPT, to leverage parent Salesforce’s CRM technology. That’s part of the message that Slack is reiterating today.

Some of what Slack is talking about makes sense. For one, Slack plans to launch an AI-powered “smart search” that hopefully solves one of the problems that Slack, Teams, and other chat apps introduce: finding that one critical piece of information that was communicated in one of the dozens of channels, group chats, and direct messages. Like Slack’s other features, those results will be footnoted with links to the actual chats where Slack sourced its information.

The company is also reiterating what it said last year regarding chat summaries, AI-powered synopses of what people were talking about while your attention was diverted elsewhere or away. And thread summaries will do something similar, rolling up a prolonged conversation with the salient points. But there’s a catch: Slack AI can only index conversations and threads. Documents uploaded to the system will not be queried. Neither will Slack’s Huddles. You’ll have to trust that the critical detail you’re hoping Slack AI will catch doesn’t live in either category.

Mark Hachman / IDG

There’s just a couple of problems. For one, Slack’s video demonstration of the new features refused to even promise that they’ll roll out.

“The following information is intended for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, and not as a binding commitment,” Slack says. (Emphasis provided by Slack.) “Please do not rely on this information in making your purchasing decisions. The development, release and timing of any products, features or functionality remain at the sole discretion of Slack, and are subject to change.”

Slack

Slack representatives also declined to reveal what Salesforce planned to charge for the new Slack AI features, even though rivals like Microsoft and Google have been very public with their pricing. Okay! (“Slack AI will be sold as a paid add-on for Enterprise plans and we’ll disclose additional pricing information when Slack AI rolls out to non-invoice plans,” the company said in a statement.)

These days, AI practically sells itself. But for a company that prides itself on knowing how sales works, you would think Salesforce and Slack would be a little more confident in their own product, right?