Winter is AI: Slack Introduces a new AI-enabled Feature
As corporates are shifting to remote x hybrid steups the sheer volume of workspace communication has become evident to many and the burden of tracking with countless message threads indeed becomes overwhelming.
Slack has been popular among corporates for its solutions to such modern organizational problems, and now the platform is embracing the trend of incorporating artificial intelligence in its application (1).
The company wants to optimize AI capabilities to provide its consumers with easy and more efficient solutions that will save time and improve overall office efficiency, giving employees a comforting office experience.
This AI integration will create the ability to summarize Slack chat channels by allowing users to easily comprehend the most relevant information particularly after hours away from the application.
This AI functionality extends its skills to message threads and ensures that important messages are not missed. However, its AI summarizes to assist users in identifying specific information hidden within their messages too.
Users can also ask queries and the Slack AI assistant will extract relevant data from those messages, channels, and files, and provide easy-to-reference summaries that are convenient and comforting.
The AI functionalities shall be tested in the coming months and those interested and pre-apply on the Slack link above. The pricing specifics shall be revealed in the official launch, but for now, the company is keen to hear feedback from test participants.
The company has confirmed the new version to automate the process and also improve access to information. The company is adapting well to the trend of AI owing to the accomplishments and genAI revolution of OpenAI's ChatGPT (2).
The upcoming features incorporate AI, automation, and knowledge sharing all with a focus on improving team collaboration and helping its consumers to expedite their work culture and management.
The highlighting element of the current version is Slack AI which is designed to streamline work processes and save users time and energy to scroll through the left-out conversations and chats.
The feature will be titled "channel recaps" as it provides fast highlights of any channel's activity along with providing a rapid summary of crucial developments and aiding in duties such as writing status reports and summing feedback.
Slack will also be introducing an updated "workflow builder" that allows anyone to automate tasks, independent of coding expertise which also pleases developers since it streamlines the app development process by handling hosting and infrastructure administration.
The platform will also serve as a central location for users to swiftly discover and install automation templates. Slack's communication flow will also include "lists" which allow users to create lists of ongoing projects and assign them to relevant parties, and also track their progress through completion.
However, these are the possible new features and announcements to be introduced by Slack, and not all are yet ready to sail. Lists will be available in the coming winter with widespread distribution across several countries.
Meanwhile, the Slack AI will be going through a pilot phone this winter followed by a larger deployment if the test becomes successful, and for now the "workflow builder" is available for premium users with its hub set to launch in this month (3).
The new automation hub shall centralize templates, pre-existing workflows, and other automation of convenience. However, all-in-all the rest of the features can get a paid tag and we are yet unaware which one shall fall in what category.
We shall keep you updated as we come across detailed information!