Key Highlights
- Slack’s latest update turns its familiar bot into a personalized AI companion for planning, searching, and collaboration.
- Users can now find files, messages, and updates without needing exact keywords.
- The AI Slackbot connects with Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar for scheduling and meeting coordination.
- All AI processing runs within AWS’s secure virtual private cloud, ensuring no external data training or exposure.
Slack is imparting a significant AI revamp to its old-time productivity partner. The organization is presently trying out Slackbot’s new version, which will completely change its character, going from a basic reminder tool to an AI assistant that will be capable of managing workflows, helping in locating information, and even planning projects with teams.
“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.”
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A Smarter, More Personal Slackbot
So far, the main tasks of Slackbot have been sending reminders, responding to commands, and automating small tasks. However, the new version takes on the role of a personalized workspace assistant. It can come up with plans to suit one’s needs, interpret messages and files, and shed light on various conversations going on in the team.
The upgraded Slackbot is represented as a small icon next to the search bar in the Slack app interface. By clicking on it, a chat-like panel opens up on the right where users can type in plain language prompts such as “What are my top priorities today?” or “Find the latest updates on our Q4 campaign.”
Leveraging its contextual understanding, the Slackbot scans messages, documents, and workspace data, and produces responses that are tailor-made for the user— a process very similar to other AI productivity tools but deeply embedded within Slack’s ecosystem.
AI-Powered Planning and Collaboration
Slack showed off how the AI-powered Slackbot can organize a product launch plan inside Canvas, automatically gathering information from multiple channels. It can even help design a social media campaign that aligns with a brand’s tone of voice.
In addition, the company has made Slackbot even smarter, and it now supports a natural language search feature. Users don’t have to depend on specific keywords any longer; they can just say, “Find me the document that Jay shared in our last meeting,” and Slackbot will guide them to the right document.
Apart from these, Slackbot is integrated into both Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar, so it is easy for users to arrange or sync meetings on the calendar of their choice without changing apps, adding better productivity and collaboration.
Data Security and Accessibility
As worries over data privacy escalate, Slack reassured that all the AI-powered interactions occur in the virtual private cloud of Amazon Web Services. Businesses can make the decision to turn off the AI Slackbot, but the people in a workspace cannot individually choose to do so. The feature is undergoing a trial that includes 70,000 employees from Salesforce and selected enterprise customers. Unveiling the complete functionality is anticipated by the end of 2025.
The new functions will not affect the classic Slackbot features, as setting reminders, responding to commands, and automated replies, which will continue to be available, ensuring a very smooth transition for existing users.
