Slack is adding AI agents. This is what you can do with them

Workplace messaging app Slack is adding several artificial intelligence (AI) features, which include the ability to connect AI-powered agents, marking the future of autonomous generative AI in the workplace. 

AI agents are designed to take autonomous actions to assist humans and do not require a human to tell them what to do, as they gather data based on user preference. AI agents already exist in some home devices, such as those that regulate the temperature of a room. 

This is unlike AI chatbots, which are designed with conversation with humans in mind and serve as more of a co-pilot in assisting humans. 

The Salesforce-owned company does not have its own AI agents and will instead support Salesforce’s AI-powered agents Agentforce, as well as outside AI agents from Asana, Cohere, Adobe Express, Workday and Writer. Customers who make their own AI agents can also integrate them into Slack. 

The tool is only available to paying Slack customers. 

What can you do with an AI agent?

The move comes as Slack aims to become a place where humans can communicate with bots and agents. The AI agent would help humans with tasks such as drafting emails. 

Slack said that the agents will only have limited access to customer information. 

“We built a new API specifically for agents where there’s a contract seeded with it that the data cannot be exported, stored or used for LLM training,” Rob Seaman, Slack’s chief product officer, said in an interview with VentureBeat in July. 

“Desk workers are spending a self-reporting third of their day on tasks they consider low value and half of the people we talk to aren’t able to find the information they need to do their jobs,” he added. 

“We think this is because there are more and more apps and services they use on a daily basis and it’s hard to keep track of”.

The announcement comes one day before Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference on Tuesday. 

Slack also announced an AI Workflow Builder, which will generate workflows from prompts to automate tasks, and an AI search feature to find answers to questions from files uploaded on Slack from connected apps such as Zoom.

The company said it was also adding audio and written notes and transcriptions of conversations through Slack’s audio meeting feature Huddles.