Slack also looks to be intentionally selective about where and when genAI is used within its app. This is one way that we are guarding against hallucinations.”Īnd if the AI can’t provide an attribution and a source, the tool won’t generate a response to avoid errors. “We'll give you links to all of those, so you can go back and double check the accuracy - it's very easy to see where all of this comes from. “Oftentimes, a summary is actually a synthesis of five or six different messages,” said Rayl. This is done with a “read more” button that returns the user to the original message and channel that generated the summary. One tack the company has taken is to provide transparency via citations or links to where information in a conversation summary is derived. LLMs are prone to hallucinations - the output of incorrect information in response to user prompts - and for Slack, acknowledging the problem has been part of the genAI development process of. Tackling genAI ‘hallucinations’Īlong with the various benefits of generative AI in collaboration apps, there are drawbacks to using large language models (LLMs) in a business context. “For those that are overseeing the work, GAI can provide a self-service means of gaining awareness of the overall team deliverable and even the well-being or concerns that the team has expressed through their chat posting,” he said. There are benefits for managers or team leaders, too, Gotta said. “When you ‘leave the flow’it’s hard to catch up,” he said. Generative AI can also help new team members quickly re-engage with teammates when they return from a different task - another challenge users face when accessing collaboration apps. Generative AI can help, he said, by automating processes touncover “hidden insights related to people, topics, files, tasks, and create a synopsis of what the group has been discussing.” The freeform nature of collaboration tools - which are used to share information, coordinate work, and maintain awareness of work activity - can lead to a lot of noise, Gotta said, with users struggling to find relevant information in the applications at times. These moves mark the beginning of the “next phase, or evolution,” in group chat-centric workspaces, said Mike Gotta, research vice president at Gartner. Google and Microsoft, which also sell team collaboration applications, have been pushing ahead with their own genAI pilot projects with customers, for instance, and, in the case of Google, already bringing the technology to market. Slack isn’t alone in weaving AI into its software. This can help a user more quickly move “from knowledge seeker to insights” - and ultimately to action, she said. “Typically, you want to be able to leverage genAI in the places and spaces where people are already working and communicating to maximize user adoption,” said Herrington. The ability to access genAI functions directly from a collaboration application should save users time, said Kim Herrington, a senior analyst at Forrester. GenAI could make collaboration more productive Slack is adding generative AI tools that can be used to more quickly summarize team chats, huddles, and even documents to surface needed information quickly. “But using generative AI, we can take this one step further - you can ask a question and we can go through all the information that your company has in Slack and give you an answer to that exact question.”Ī user could, for example, ask Slack for the rollout date for a product and immediately receive a specific date, rather than having to scroll through a list of related posts and links to documents in search results to find the information. “Slack has always had search - we do our best to surface messages and files related to your search,” said Rayl. If a user has been away for a couple of weeks - or even just a day or two - and doesn’t want to trawl through a barrage of messages that may or may not be relevant, the AI tool can provide an overview of what’s been discussed.įinally, Slack wants to use genAI to generate better answers when users search for information in the app. “The idea is you click a button, AI runs through the thread and says, 'Here's what happened in the last five hours.' And instead of reading the whole thread, you get a nice little summary.”Īnother similar feature is a planned channel “recap,” providing a user with a quick summary of conversations within a particular team channel. “People end up having these super long conversations in threads hundreds of messages,” said Ali Rayl, senior vice president of product management at Slack.
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