Slack thinks AI can help you keep up with chatty coworkers

Office workers fretting about AI coming for their jobs might soon have a reason to warmly welcome it into their workday: Slack is introducing new features to keep channels in check.

The workplace hub will test a slew of new generative AI features in coming months, including channel recaps, thread summaries, and more detailed search answers, in addition to rolling out a new lists tool and workflow builder.

It’s all part of a bigger overhaul the Salesforce-owned company undertook this year as it seeks to turn the latest AI advances into productivity tools and move into areas beyond messaging, according to Slack Senior Vice President of Product Management Ali Rayl.

“Slack is a very different product than it was back in 2014. Primarily messaging, but now we have an entire suite of tools to help companies be more productive across lots of different avenues, angles, and ways that we do business,” Rayl told Tech Brew. “[These features are] the next things we’re bringing into the product to increasingly make it a productivity platform for anybody in a business doing any kind of work.”

A focus on focus: As Slack has tried to become more things to more people, it also faces the risk of overwhelming them. That’s why the company embarked on its biggest redesign ever last month in an effort to streamline and prioritize the information users see when they log in.

Rayl said these new generative AI features, with their heavy focus on distilling information, are a continuation of that mission. Thread summaries are meant to help people navigate meandering tangents, while channel recaps might let users catch up on activity after a week away.

A new AI-powered search function is also designed to surface answers to queries people type into the app, which could strengthen Slack’s role as a repository for workplace information.

The new AI tools are set to pilot “this winter,” according to Rayl, although they have already been in internal use at Slack HQ.

“We anticipate we’re going to need to do some work to make sure that this is useful to everybody else as it is to us before we release it to our wide customer base,” Rayl said.

Beyond chat: Other new features from Slack are meant to push it beyond simple messaging. Lists allow users to organize information in a centralized spreadsheet-like format with items that can be assigned to different coworkers. Workflow builder, which already exists in the app, allows users to build custom automations for functions like channel onboarding or time-off requests and can now be used without the need for coding.

Ultimately, Rayl said the guiding motivation is to experiment with new ways for people to get work done.

“Slack is interesting because it lives at the intersection of how people think and how groups of people behave in pursuit of the common goal of getting work done,” Rayl said.