Slack just announced new Gen AI features, including channel recaps and thread summaries

Ahead of Dreamforce next week – its massive annual event in San Francisco – Salesforce has announced a suite of new features for its instant messaging platform Slack, with a heavy focus on deploying AI to make it easier to find and summarise content.

The three core additions include Slack AI, new automation functionality, and Slack Lists.

Slack AI is a native generative AI tool baked directly into the app, which aims to provide useful, quick solutions for users.

Its three main uses at launch will be:

• Channel Recaps: These will allow users to instantly gain insights from any channel as well as provide status reports.
• Thread Summaries: With this users can get a grasp on any ongoing thread discussions.
• Search Answers: This feature helps users to quickly extract information – such as messages or files. It’s also able to discern which information is most up to date.

“I was a little skeptical of this, so I actually tried it on like our own actual slack a few days ago for a different product for actually our UI redesign,” Slack’s VP of Product, Ali Rayl, said on a call with SmartCompany.

“I got the actual answer, and I was really proud of it, because a week before we had actually changed the date. So not only did I get the right answer, but it had figured out how to do the up-to-date answer.”

Slack has also been adamant about ensuring that trust is a factor here, particularly as generative AI is still rolling out across the entire industry and mistakes can happen.

“Summaries are always going to have an attribution to tell you who said it, and this is important for two reasons,” Rayl said.

“Number one, to build confidence that this is actual things that people said. And number two, that context is really important. I’m going to interpret something differently if it came from an engineer versus a designer versus our CEO.”

Slack updates workflow builder for non-coders, adds Lists

Slack is also introducing new automation capabilities, particularly in regards to its Workflow Builders, that will let non-coders to set up automation processes.

It comes with integrations from partners like Google, Atlassian, and Asana. There’s also a connection with Salesforce Flow for more customised Slack workflows.

Its also offering a more streamlined method to build custom Slack apps that can integrate with internal systems.

There is also a central Automation Hub where users can access templates, explore workflows used across their organisation, and reuse automations from other teams.

Lastly, the platform is introducing Slack Lists. This feature will help Slack users manage, track and address work within the app itself. This includes project tracking and request approvals.

Our take:

With this new suite of features, Slack seems to be further establishing its position as a holistic productivity platform.

We made this argument back in May when it first announced Slack GPT and the ability for users to integrate any chatbot onto the platform they wanted. And it was further strengthened last month, when the platform got a bit of a facelift, which we argued made it feel like  a social media platform.

This new suite of features seems to further solidify the notion that Slack really wants to keep you on Slack.

“We want to make it as convenient as possible for people to get work done together. So when we figure out ways for people to work together that we can bring into Slack – we’ll try to figure out how to do that,” Rayl said.

It’s worth noting that Slack Lists will be in pilot during Australian summer and will launch sometime in 2024. Similarly, Slack AI will be piloted at the same time.

It’s currently unclear what plans they will be attached to when they launch.

Workflow Builder is available now on paid plans and is subject to platform pricing. Slack’s new automation hub will be available later this month.