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Slack is rolling out an extensive array of artificial intelligence features that promise to eliminate routine tasks and turn the messaging platform into a central hub for enterprise productivity, marking owner Salesforce’s direct challenge to Microsoft’s workplace AI dominance.
The announcements, set to roll out over the coming months, include AI-powered writing assistance embedded directly into Slack’s canvas feature, contextual message explanations, automated action item identification, and enterprise search capabilities that span multiple connected business applications. The moves come as Salesforce simultaneously restricts external AI companies from accessing Slack data, creating a walled garden approach that mirrors broader industry trends toward platform consolidation.
“Unlike some AI tools that sit outside the flow of work, Slack’s AI shows up where work happens – across conversations, decisions, and documentation,” said Shalini Agarwal, Vice President of Slack Product at Salesforce, in an exclusive interview with VentureBeat. “The key differentiator is context, which comes in the form of structured and unstructured data in Slack.”
The timing underscores intensifying competition in the $45 billion enterprise collaboration market, where Microsoft’s Teams platform and its Copilot AI assistant have gained significant traction against Slack since Salesforce’s $27.7 billion acquisition of the messaging service in 2021. Google is also pushing its Duet AI across Workspace applications, creating a three-way battle for corporate customers increasingly focused on AI-driven productivity gains.
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How Slack’s contextual AI works inside workplace conversations
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. When combined with Slack’s existing AI-powered meeting transcription in huddles, the feature creates an end-to-end documentation workflow.
“AI needs to feel easy and seamless, and you shouldn’t have to work hard to use it,” Agarwal told VentureBeat. “Since the release of AI in Slack, customers have summarized more than 600 million messages, saving a collective 1.1 million hours across users.”
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