OpenAI's new ChatGPT Agent can control your entire computer to handle tasks like calendar management and research reports. It's the first AI that goes beyond chatbots to actual task automation, but it takes 15-30 minutes per task.
Slack's new AI features decode company jargon and turn workplace chatter into useful context. While competitors build standalone chatbots, Slack bets that AI embedded in existing tools wins.
Good Morning from San Francisco, TSMC posted a record $13.5 billion profit. AI demand drove the surge. The chipmaker
Slack's new AI features decode company jargon and turn workplace chatter into useful context. While competitors build standalone chatbots, Slack bets that AI embedded in existing tools wins.
💡 TL;DR - The 30 Seconds Version
👉 Slack launches AI features that explain company jargon on hover and turn team conversations into project briefs and action items.
📊 AI uses your workspace's conversation history to understand terms like "FRED" (your customer database) and "circle back" (probably never).
🏭 Enterprise customers get full access now, while Business plans get limited features as Slack rolls out capabilities throughout 2025.
🌍 Strategy mirrors Perplexity CEO's view that "chatbots are dead" - context-aware AI embedded in existing tools beats standalone chatbots.
⚡ Salesforce-owned Slack since 2021 has been training AI on workplace chat data, giving it an edge over Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
🚀 Real play: Slack positions itself as the AI layer for your entire tech stack, not just another productivity app with AI bolted on.
Slack wants to solve one of work's most annoying problems: figuring out what your coworkers actually mean when they talk.
The company just announced a bunch of AI features that turn your workplace's digital mess into something useful. Hover over a confusing acronym in a message and AI explains it. Miss a meeting? AI writes you a summary. Need to draft a project brief? AI pulls from your team's chat history to write one.
This isn't just another AI chatbot bolted onto a product. Slack is doing something smarter—it's making AI that actually knows your company.
Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas recently explained why standalone AI chatbots are becoming obsolete. "The browser is bigger than chat," he told The Verge. "It's the only way to build true personalization, memory, and context."
Slack seems to agree. Rather than create yet another chatbot, they built AI directly into Slack itself. You don't switch to a different app to ask questions. The AI sits right inside your conversations and documents.
This makes sense. Copy-pasting context from Slack into ChatGPT gets old fast. You lose the thread. You miss the subtext. You end up with generic responses that don't fit your company's style.
Slack's AI knows your team calls the customer database "FRED" and that "circle back" means "probably never going to happen." That context matters.
The most practical feature explains company jargon on the spot. Hover over any confusing term and AI breaks it down using your workspace's conversation history. New employees won't need to ask what "the widget project" means—the AI already knows from three months of team chats.
The writing assistant lives in Canvas, Slack's document feature. It can turn a rambling conversation into a clean project brief. It extracts action items from meetings. It rewrites formal emails in a friendly tone or vice versa.
Search gets smarter too. Instead of hunting through channels, the AI finds relevant files and conversations across connected apps like Google Drive and Salesforce. Ask "What did marketing decide about Q3 campaigns?" and it surfaces the actual discussion thread, not just keyword matches.
Huddles, Slack's voice chat feature, now transcribes automatically and highlights key decisions. Miss a call? The AI writes a summary with action items already pulled out.
Slack's AI push comes as every productivity app races to add similar features. Google built AI writing tools into Workspace. Microsoft stuffed Copilot into Office. Apple added AI writing help to everything.
But Slack has an advantage: they already own workplace communication. They don't need to convince people to use a new tool. They just need to make their existing tool smarter.
The company also has data. Since Salesforce bought Slack in 2021, they've been using chat data to train machine learning models. Every "sounds good" and "let's sync offline" teaches the AI how people actually communicate at work.
This creates a feedback loop. As teams chat more, the AI learns how they actually talk. It picks up on patterns—who uses which terms, how decisions get made, what certain phrases really mean.
Slack's real play isn't just making chat easier—it's becoming the central nervous system for workplace AI.
Think about it: every productivity app needs to understand workplace context to be useful. Project management tools need to know who's working on what. Document editors need to understand company terminology. Video calls need to connect with project timelines.
Here's what Slack figured out: they already sit at the center of work communication. They know who reports to whom, what projects are running, when things are due. Most other apps are working blind.
This explains why Slack is adding AI search across connected apps. It's not just about making Slack better. They want to become the brain that connects all your other work apps.
Not everything works perfectly yet. The features roll out in phases, with some available now and others "coming soon." Enterprise customers get the full suite, while smaller teams get fewer features.
The AI can still make mistakes, especially with company-specific context. And like all workplace AI, it raises questions about privacy and data use. Slack says the AI only sees information when you ask relevant questions, but that's still a lot of access.
The learning curve matters too. As Perplexity's CEO noted about his own AI browser, "It takes a while to stop doing things the usual way and start using the AI more." Teams will need time to figure out what works.
This shows where workplace AI is actually going. Forget standalone chatbots—the winning move is building AI into apps people already use. And forget generic responses. The AI that wins knows your company's quirks and culture.
This puts pressure on other productivity apps to follow suit. A calendar app without AI scheduling feels outdated. A document editor without AI writing help seems incomplete.
It also raises the stakes for data. The companies with the best workplace data—who talks to whom, what projects are active, how decisions get made—will build the most useful AI.
Why this matters:
• Slack is betting that context beats cleverness—AI that knows your company will beat AI that's just smart
• The real AI revolution isn't chatbots, it's making every workplace tool smarter about how your team actually works
Q: How much do these AI features cost?
A: Enterprise Search and translations are available now on Business Plus ($12.50/month per user) and Enterprise plans ($18/month per user). The full AI suite including jargon explanations and writing assistance requires higher-tier plans, with some features limited to Enterprise customers only.
Q: When will the jargon explanation and writing features actually launch?
A: Slack says these features are "coming soon" and will roll out throughout 2025, but hasn't given specific dates. Enterprise Search and AI translations are already available, while message context explanations, Canvas writing assistance, and profile summaries are still in development.
Q: Can other companies or Slack employees see my team's conversations?
A: The AI only sees information when you ask relevant questions and processes data on your device, not Slack's servers. You can choose to delete prompts from Slack's servers and opt out of having your data used for AI training, though Salesforce has been using chat data since acquiring Slack in 2021.
Q: How does this compare to Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace AI features?
A: Slack's advantage is context—it knows your company's specific jargon and communication patterns from years of chat history. Microsoft Copilot and Google Workspace AI offer similar writing help, but they don't have the same deep understanding of how your team actually talks and works together.
Q: What happens if the AI explains company jargon incorrectly?
A: The AI learns from your workspace's conversation history, so accuracy improves over time as more context builds up. If it gets something wrong, you can presumably correct it, and the system should learn from that feedback. However, Slack hasn't detailed how error correction works.
Q: Does this work with apps beyond Google Drive and Salesforce?
A: The AI search connects to "connected apps" including Google Drive, Salesforce, and Microsoft Teams, but Slack hasn't published a complete list. It likely works with apps that already have Slack integrations, though the depth of AI integration may vary by app.
Q: Can I turn off these AI features if I don't want them?
A: Slack hasn't detailed opt-out controls yet, but given privacy concerns and enterprise requirements, there will likely be settings to disable AI features. The hover-to-explain function and sidecar assistant seem designed to be optional rather than mandatory parts of the interface.
Q: Will this replace the need for ChatGPT or other AI tools at work?
A: For many workplace tasks, yes. Slack's AI knows your company context, so you won't need to copy-paste information into ChatGPT as often. However, for complex analysis, creative writing, or tasks requiring general knowledge, standalone AI tools may still be more powerful.
Marcus Schuler
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