Slack has finally released its generative AI toolset to the world, after teasing it for the past year. Most of these features are aimed at simplifying your daily life when using a work-centric chat platform.
First, AI automatically generates channel summaries to provide you with the important highlights you missed when you were away from your keyboard or smartphone. Slack says the algorithms that generate these summaries are smart enough to separate content from the different topics being discussed. In other words, if your coworkers start discussing coffee beans and also talk about third quarter earnings, etc., you should include a paragraph about both.
Similar tools are available for threads. Threads are basically just one-on-one or group conversations that don't occupy an entire channel. This allows users to “get updates on any thread with one click.” It's okay to ignore a coworker who texts you eight times in a row, even if one short paragraph is enough for him.
Another great feature is conversational search. This allows you to ask questions using natural language instead of slowly searching for previous chats using Slack's existing search bar. The algorithm does the crawling for you and provides “clear, concise answers based on relevant conversational data.”
It remains to be seen how much time these tools will save the average user, but Slack says it remains committed to artificial intelligence. To this end, the company is preparing more native AI features, including the ability to generate a personalized overview of channels that users don't check every day but want to keep an eye on. Additionally, Slack says it will soon integrate some of its most popular third-party apps into its AI ecosystem.
