If you’ve ever struggled to keep up with the numerous threads and direct messages that weave their way through Slack, why not let the AI chatbot ChatGPT pick up the, er, slack?
OpenAI and Salesforce (which owns Slack) have teamed up with an official Slack app, which is curently in beta. (You can sign up for the waitlist, here.)
OpenAI and Salesforce describe the app as a “conversational interface powered by OpenAI’s large language models to get instant conversation summaries to stay informed, research tools to learn about any topic, and provide writing assistance to quickly draft messages.” It sounds a bit like the app will be available as a bot to address, either in conversation or your own private channel, to solicit advice or just provide a summary of what’s going on.
ChatGPT started taking the world by storm last year, and the chatbot became the impetus for competing services like Microsoft’s Bing chatbot and You.com. Other services, like Canva’s Magic Write, have been designed mainly for creative ideation and AI-assisted writing, which is what the new Slack service will offer as well. All of these services are explicitly AI-powered, though there are many you don’t even think about that use AI to assist you.
Salesforce hasn’t said when its app will come out of beta. Microsoft, however, is looming on the horizon with another launch event on March 16. “The Future of Work with AI” event is expected to unveil how Microsoft plans to integrate AI into Office, most likely with generative AI within Word, and possible AI-infused activities within other apps—AI-generated email composition, for example.
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor, PCWorld
Mark has written for PCWorld for the last decade, with 30 years of experience covering technology. He has authored over 3,500 articles for PCWorld alone, covering PC microprocessors, peripherals, and Microsoft Windows, among other topics. Mark has written for publications including PC Magazine, Byte, eWEEK, Popular Science and Electronic Buyers' News, where he shared a Jesse H. Neal Award for breaking news. He recently handed over a collection of several dozen Thunderbolt docks and USB-C hubs because his office simply has no more room.