Slack launches Slack AI for channel recaps, thread summaries, and work query searches

Slack has launched its generative AI companion 'Slack AI', designed to search for answers on work-related queries, create channel recaps with key highlights, and generate thread summaries. The AI companion uses generative AI to respond to inquiries based on user conversations and company disclosures, allowing users to search for project objectives, stakeholders, company policies, experts, historical insights, and even define unfamiliar acronyms.

The "channel recaps" feature offers users summaries of content shared within Slack channels over a specific time, while thread summaries help users access the core of conversations and identify key messages and their sources. The company asserts that consumer data is not used to train its large language models (LLMs), and all LLMs remain within Slack, preventing any intelligence from being shared externally. Currently, Slack AI is available in English as an add-on for Enterprise plans.

Slack has also integrated AI-powered platforms such as Notion, Perplexity, and PagerDuty, allowing users to receive updates and content summaries within Slack when links to these platforms are shared. Future features include channel digests, which will allow users to select channels for summarization, and native AI integration with Salesforce's Einstein Copilot, which will improve conversational AI assistance within CRM applications.