• Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot, the company’s workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees. • The new Slackbot, now generally available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, is Salesforce’s most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging “agentic AI” movement - where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. • The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products rather than render them obsolete. • “Slackbot isn’t just another copilot or AI assistant,” said Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack’s chief technology officer, in an exclusive interview with Salesforce. • “It’s the front door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce.” From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the ground up Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the new Slackbot from its predecessor: “The old Slackbot was, you know, a little tricycle, and the new Slackbot is like, you know, a Porsche.” The original Slackbot, which has existed since Slack’s early days, performed basic algorithmic tasks - reminding users to add colleagues to documents, suggesting channel archives, and delivering simple notifications. • The new version runs on an entirely different

Article Summaries:

  • Salesforce announced the launch of a fully rebuilt Slackbot, re‑branded as a “fully powered AI agent.” The new bot, available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, replaces the original notification‑only assistant with a large‑language‑model (LLM)‑driven system that can search Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendars and Slack conversations, draft documents, and execute actions on behalf of users. Built on Anthropic’s Claude to meet FedRAMP compliance, the company plans to add support for Google Gemini and possibly OpenAI models later. Salesforce positions the upgrade as a key step in making Slack central to the emerging “agentic AI” trend, competing with Microsoft and Google’s workplace AI offerings.

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