Lidiane Jones, general manager of Slack, during a presentation during the Salesforce annual conference in San Francisco on September 14, 2023 (AFP/JOSH EDELSON)
With the latest generation of artificial intelligence (AI), “we have launched more new features in the last nine months than in several years before,” notes Lidiane Jones, general manager of Slack.
She took the reins of the professional collaboration platform at the start of the year, “at the same time” that generative AI was taking the world by storm, and “accelerating the pace of innovation” for her company, relates- she said during an interview with AFP.
Originally from Brazil and a resident of Massachusetts, in the eastern United States, the manager was in San Francisco this week for “Dreamforce”, Salesforce’s annual gathering.
The customer relations software giant bought Slack two years ago, when the pandemic made this service and its competitors – Teams (Microsoft), Workplace (Meta), Asana, etc. – essential for teleworking.
Generative AI, which makes it possible to produce texts, images and sounds upon simple request in everyday language, is in the process of profoundly transforming these tools originally designed to facilitate team work and internal communication.
“When I came back from my two weeks of vacation this summer, I had mountains of messages from clients and colleagues to catch up on,” says the lead user of Slack by way of example.
“I asked +Slack AI+ to summarize everything and in two hours I was up to date, instead of spending the day or week.”
– AI race –
Lidiane Jones, general manager of Slack, during a presentation during the Salesforce annual conference in San Francisco on September 14, 2023 (AFP/JOSH EDELSON)
Slack added search and summary tools, as well as programs to automate business tasks, like approving expense reports or connecting with experts.
“We save a lot of time. No need to go to your email, then to another application, before reconnecting to the platform…”, explains Ms. Jones.
Users can also speak directly to generative AI chatbots, such as Claude (from Anthropic, a neighboring start-up), and soon ChatGPT, from OpenAI, which has embodied this technology for the general public since its late launch. 2022.
“All these applications connected to Slack constitute our strength,” says the boss. “We are above all a very open platform, which is a big difference compared to Teams.”
With its approximately 300 million monthly users, Microsoft’s conversations and videoconferencing application is outstripping Slack (12 million daily active users in 2019).
In 2020, the Californian company filed a complaint against Microsoft for unfair competition with the European Union. She criticizes the IT group for combining Teams, at no additional cost, with Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Outlook.
To appease Brussels, Microsoft recently announced that it was going to separate the application from its office suite.
But thanks to its major investments in OpenAI, Microsoft also has a head start in generative AI. Its engineers seek to transform each software into a “co-pilot” for professionals and Internet users.
“Slack is ideal for this technology,” says Lidiane Jones, who succeeded the company’s charismatic co-founder, Stewart Butterfield.
“Between conversations and documents, all of a company’s knowledge is on the platform, and this data, unstructured, but connected to Salesforce’s infrastructure, makes our AI tools ultra-powerful.”
– Omniscient assistants –
Lidiane Jones, general manager of Slack, during a presentation during the Salesforce annual conference in San Francisco on September 14, 2023 (AFP/JOSH EDELSON)
For now, Slack has no plans to develop its own language model, the technology at the heart of generative AI.
“We don’t have the impression that we need to reinvent the wheel,” jokes the chef, while reserving the possibility of designing a specialized model.
Looking even further ahead, Slack may one day integrate personalized AI agents.
Many experts predict the coming advent of virtual assistants who will know absolutely everything about their user.
These applications will be able to converse with him and execute his requests on a daily basis, from his online shopping to writing messages adapted to his interlocutors.
Lidiane Jones believes in it too. But while software like Slack has blurred the lines between personal and professional lives, she doesn’t think such tools are ready to intrude on either side.
“It’s a possibility,” she concedes. “And it fulfills a desire: I have a family to manage, a pretty intense job… It would be great to have a system that brings all of that together in one place.”
“But imagine a personal program that sees all your work in the office, and vice versa… There is a fundamental question of trust to be resolved.”
The manager hopes, however, that technological innovations will eventually provide sufficient guarantees to create these omniscient butlers.
“It would be super convenient. Catch-up when you get back from vacation will only take five minutes!”
© 2023 AFP
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