Salesforce-owned Slack is rolling out a series of artificial intelligence features designed to eliminate routine tasks and turn the messaging platform into a central hub for enterprise productivity. The moves come as the company restricts external AI companies from accessing Slack data, creating a walled garden approach that mirrors broader industry trends toward platform consolidation.
Slack’s new capabilities depart from traditional AI assistant models that require users to actively prompt for help. Instead, the platform will proactively surface relevant information and automate routine tasks within existing workflows. The AI writing assistance, launching soon within Slack’s canvas feature, will allow teams to automatically generate project briefs from conversation threads, extract action items from brainstorming sessions, and reformat meeting notes into structured updates.
The centerpiece of Slack’s AI strategy is enterprise search, now generally available, which allows users to query information across connected applications. The capability addresses a persistent productivity drain in modern workplaces, where employees spend an estimated 41% of their time on repetitive tasks like searching for information across disconnected systems.
However, Salesforce has been aggressively restricting how external AI companies access Slack data. In May, the company amended its API terms of service to prohibit bulk data exports and explicitly ban using Slack data to train large language models. The move affects third-party AI search companies like Glean, which had been indexing Slack conversations alongside other enterprise data sources to provide unified search experiences.
Salesforce is making a calculated gamble. By restricting access to Slack data, the company is betting that its own AI capabilities will prove superior to external alternatives. But enterprise customers have consistently shown they prefer choice and flexibility over forced vendor lock-in.
The new AI features are included in all paid Slack plans, with advanced capabilities reserved for higher-tier subscriptions. Enterprise+ customers will receive the full AI experience, including enterprise search and governance controls designed for large-scale deployment.
Slack’s approach offers a compelling alternative to Microsoft’s suite-wide integration strategy. The question is whether contextual AI within conversations can compete with the broader productivity gains promised by AI assistants embedded across entire software ecosystems.
Source: https://venturebeat.com/ai/slack-gets-smarter-new-ai-tools-summarize-chats-explain-jargon-and-automate-work