Slack AI is here, letting you catch up on lengthy threads and unread messages

Slack is launching a suite of built-in AI features that serve up summaries of threads and channel recaps, while also allowing you to ask questions about what’s been going on at work. The workplace management platform first started testing Slack AI last year, but now it’s rolling out as a paid add-on for Slack Enterprise users.

In case you’ve fallen behind on a particular thread someone has tagged you in, you can use Slack AI to get a full summary of the conversation, as well as who has said what. There’s also a way to get a recap of the chatter that has been going on in channels.

Image: Slack

You can select the star icon at the top-right corner of a channel to have Slack AI summarize only unread messages, messages that have popped up over the past seven days, or messages sent in a timeframe of your choosing. This would seem especially helpful when you’ve been out for a few days and need to know what’s been going on at work.

Slack AI will also let you ask questions about a particular project you’ve been working on or about your workplace policies, assuming that they’re mentioned in Slack. The AI tool will use “relevant messages” to catch you up on any topics you’re wondering about, and can even be used to define acronyms used on your workplace’s Slack.

Image: Slack

The platform’s AI will integrate with some of the other apps that plug into Slack as well, allowing you to do things like get summaries of Notion documents in link previews, or ask questions about something stored in Box.

In addition to this bundle of features, Slack says it’s building more tools to summarize and prioritize information. It’s also creating a new digest feature, which will offer up highlights from the channels of your choice in case you don’t have time to scroll through dozens of messages. Slack is also working on a native integration of Einstein Copilot, its AI chatbot that can write messages to colleagues for you.

Image: Slack

Slack says the large language models (LLMs) it uses are hosted directly within Slack, adding that “customer data remains siloed” and won’t “be used to serve other clients.” The company also says it won’t use customer data to train LLMs. For now, Slack AI is only available in US and UK English, with support for additional languages and plans coming soon.