Slack rolls out its AI tools to all paying customers

Slack just rolled out its AI tools to all paying users, after releasing them to a select subset of customers earlier this year. The companys been teasing these features since last year and, well, now theyre here.

The AI auto-generates channel recaps to give people key highlights of stuff they missed while away from the keyboard or smartphone, for keeping track of important work stuff and office in-jokes. Slack says the algorithm that generates these recaps is smart enough to pull content from the various topics discussed in the channel. This means that youll get a paragraph on how plans are going for Jennys cake party in the conference room and another on sales trends or whatever.

Theres something similar available for threads, which are smaller conversations between one or a few people. The tool will recap any of these threads into a short paragraph. Customers can also opt into a daily recap for any channel or thread, delivered each morning.

Slack

Another interesting feature is conversational search. The various Slack channels stretch on forever and it can be tough to find the right chat when necessary. This allows people to ask questions using natural language, with the algorithm doing the actual searching.

These tools arent just for English speakers, as Slack AI now offers Japanese and Spanish language support. Slack says itll soon integrate some of its most-used third-party apps into the AI ecosystem. To that end, integration with Salesforces Einstein Copilot is coming in the near future.

It remains to be seen if these tools will actually be helpful or if theyre just more excuses to put the letters AI in promotional materials. Ive been on Slack a long time and I havent encountered too many scenarios in which Id need a series of auto-generated recaps, as longer conversations are typically relegated to one-on-one meetings, emails or video streams. However, maybe this will change how people use the service.