Slack is becoming an AI-driven workplace: Here’s what it means for your business

the Messaging application Where millions of office workers share memes and coordinate projects is quietly turning into something more ambitious: a platform where AI agents work alongside humans as digital coworkers.

As part of Salesforce Comprehensive AI Initiative announced Tuesday, Recession It’s evolving from a communication tool into what company officials call a “business operating system” — a system where AI agents can attend your meetings, summarize your conversations, create presentations, and even negotiate with other AI agents on your behalf.

“We’ve been on a journey to become what we call a business operating system — one that simplifies the complexity of all the systems you use every day,” Slack CPO Rob Seaman, who oversees the company’s AI integration, said in an interview with VentureBeat. “While messaging and human interaction remain at its core, the system now provides access to automation and all the applications you need to do your job, as well as AI agents, who we believe will be critical players in the workplace.”

The new digital workplace: AI agents as your permanent colleagues

The shift is already evident in companies like Accenturewhere client executives use AI agents within Slack to dramatically reduce time spent on administrative tasks. These agents can prepare for meetings, summarize discussions, and even draft proposals — all within the familiar Slack interface where employees actually spend their workday.

“To ensure these AI agents are widely adopted and continually improved, it is important to integrate them where people actually work,” Seaman explained.

Inside Slack’s game-changing AI integration: What you need to know

Unlike traditional chatbots or AI assistants that require users to visit separate websites or apps, AI agents in Slack It will be integrated directly into your existing workflow. They appear in channels alongside their fellow humans and can be summoned through natural conversation.

The system is designed to be accessible to non-technical users. “There’s actually no code involved,” Seaman said. “From an end-user perspective, there’s really no technical work for you.”

But the implications for workplace dynamics are profound. In demonstrations, AI agents demonstrated that they can autonomously schedule meetings, analyze documents, create visualizations, and even collaborate with other AI agents on complex tasks.

For example, during Tuesday’s presentation, an AI customer helped an Accenture executive returning from vacation quickly learn about a customer’s activities, prepare for upcoming meetings, and formulate a proposal — tasks that would normally take hours of human effort. .

Building trust and control: How Slack’s AI security tools protect your data

While Salesforce will provide template agents for common business tasks, Seaman expects most organizations will customize their AI workers to meet specific needs.

“We will offer ready-to-use templates that address about 80% of most needs, but we expect organizations to customize their AI agents for specific purposes,” he said. “We’ve seen this pattern with Slack already — companies tend to customize the platform heavily to suit their needs.”

The company has built extensive safety measures into the system. “Proxies do the execution for you without having greater permissions than you have,” Seaman explained. “They don’t have permissions from God or administrative permissions… We’re not creating any loopholes for AI to see things it shouldn’t be able to see.”

The Human-AI Partnership: Redefining Workplace Collaboration

For many employees, the prospect of AI colleagues raises concerns about job displacement. But Salesforce executives see it as an augmentation of human capabilities, not a replacement for them.

“It’s not about handing over data. It’s about unlocking the full potential in data to enable the power of agents to deeply understand your business and customer and empower agents to take more effective actions,” said Claire Cheng, vice president of machine learning and engineering at Salesforce.

Looking to the future, Salesforce envisions more sophisticated collaboration between AI workers and humans. Future releases will enable multiple AI agents to work together on complex tasks, with specialized agents handling different aspects of projects.

“Right now, there’s a human conjuring up different factors,” Silvio Savarese, who leads AI research at Salesforce, told VentureBeat. “The future will have a coordinating agent who will call in different specialized agents who will talk, work together and perform tasks.”

This vision of the workplace — where humans and AI agents collaborate seamlessly through platforms like Slack — represents a fundamental shift in how office work gets done. And while the full implications are still unclear, one thing is clear: the desktop chat app where you’d share cat GIFs is about to get a lot more powerful.

“We’re just getting started,” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said. “When you’re just starting out, you see these little things, and then you try to extrapolate what this is going to be like. That’s an unbelievable moment.”

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