Slack is rolling out a significantly upgraded AI-powered Slackbot designed to enhance workplace productivity through natural language understanding, project coordination, and seamless integration with tools like Outlook, Google Calendar, and more.

The new Slackbot features include personalized planning, message review, data collection from channels, real-time workspace insights, and the ability to perform complex multi-step tasks, making it a true AI assistant for users.

Compared to its predecessor, which was limited to basic reminders, the upgraded Slackbot can understand natural language queries, summarize discussions, automate notes, and help organize projects, effectively acting as a personalized AI companion.

Public reactions to the new Slackbot are generally positive, with users praising its potential to save time and improve workflow, although some express concerns about privacy and data security.

Slack emphasizes that data privacy is a priority; the AI operates within Amazon Web Services' virtual private cloud, and companies can opt out of AI features, though individual users cannot, ensuring user data remains secure and is not used for training.

The AI functionalities are built with privacy in mind, with all data processed within AWS's private cloud, and Slack assures that data will not leave the firewall or be used for training AI models.

Organizations can control AI data access through admin settings, maintaining compliance and trust, while Slack highlights that user data will stay within AWS's private cloud environment.

A key feature is natural language search, allowing users to find documents or information effortlessly, such as locating a file shared during a recent meeting, without needing specific keywords.

The Slackbot integrates with tools like Google Drive, Salesforce, and OneDrive, analyzing data to provide insights and future autonomous actions, with plans to enable building custom agents without coding.

The AI assistant supports multiple languages, including Italian, making it accessible to international teams and facilitating global collaboration.

Slackbot can handle conversational questions, analyze ongoing conversations and shared files, summarize discussions, generate automated notes, and identify project risks, functioning as a comprehensive AI assistant.

Its capabilities include organizing product launches, decoding company jargon, locating documents, drafting plans, and offering actionable suggestions based on real-time workspace data analysis.

This development follows Slack’s recent AI integrations, such as channel recaps and thread summaries, with data privacy maintained by allowing companies to opt out of AI data training.

Existing features like automated messages and custom responses will continue to be available alongside the new AI enhancements, aiming to improve overall user experience.

Slack emphasizes data privacy and security, giving organizations control over AI data access through admin controls and compliance measures to ensure trust and regulatory adherence.

Currently in beta with 70,000 users, Slack plans a wider rollout by the end of 2025, with individual users unable to opt out of AI features, though companies can disable them.

The AI Slackbot is already in use internally at Salesforce and is being tested with other customers, with a full global rollout scheduled for the end of 2025.

The enhanced Slackbot is included in all paid Slack plans at no extra cost, offering deep integrations with platforms like Salesforce, Notion, and Microsoft Teams to streamline workflows.

Slack's Chief Product Officer describes the new Slackbot as a personalized AI companion, rebuilt from scratch, that will appear as an icon next to the search bar, capable of assisting with complex tasks and providing workspace insights.