Add Salesforce to the growing list of companies that are leaning in to generative artificial intelligence.
The company on Tuesday introduced Einstein GPT, an A.I. system that it hopes will help salespeople, marketers, and customer service agents do their jobs more efficiently, as well as detailed plans to integrate the chatbots into the Slack messaging system.
“The world is experiencing one of the most profound technological shifts with the rise of real-time technologies and generative AI,” said Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, in a statement. “This comes at a pivotal moment as every company is focused on connecting with their customers in more intelligent, automated, and personalized ways. Einstein GPT…is another way we are opening the door to the AI future for all our customers.”
The company’s partnership with OpenAI will see three big steps in integrating the technology into its systems.
Einstein GPT will be incorporated into Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM) products, with a goal of helping to craft marketing emails and write support articles based on past case notes.
Salesforce also plans to make ChatGPT available directly in Slack, where it could, for example, offer summaries of sales opportunities and instant conversation summaries, to help users get up to speed faster when they’ve been away for a while. (Poor Slackbot seems destined to be out of job before too long.)
"The ChatGPT app for Slack deeply integrates the power of OpenAI’s cutting-edge large language models into Slack’s conversational interface,” said Noah Desai Weiss, chief product office at Slack. “There couldn’t be a more natural fit. This will give customers [the ability to] tap the collective knowledge of their organization’s channel archives.”
Additionally, the company plans to launch a $250 million investment fund that will back generative A.I. startups.
Salesforce did not announce pricing or timing for the integrations. A pilot program is currently underway. (Slack users can join a waiting list for the Slack OpenAI integration.)
While ChatGPT and its integrations into consumer-facing outlets, such as Bing, have caught most of the spotlight, companies like Salesforce that has massive troves of their own data can open up new avenues of usefulness for the technology.
