Salesforce upgrades Slack with AI agents that tap workplace conversations

Salesforce is upgrading Slack with new AI capabilities that give agents deeper access to workplace conversations and data. The company is introducing a real-time search API, Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol server, and enhanced developer tools to help AI agents deliver more contextually relevant responses by tapping into previously inaccessible conversational data.

Why this matters: Salesforce is positioning conversational data as crucial for the next generation of AI agents, which have historically lacked sufficient context to provide truly useful responses.
• “Conversational data is the gold of the agentic era, yet it’s been locked away in unstructured messages and chats, largely out of reach for employees, let alone applications,” the company declared.
• The upgrades aim to help Slack compete more effectively with Microsoft Teams by leveraging AI agent capabilities.

How it works: The new real-time search API unlocks unstructured conversational data within Slack channels, discussions, and files for AI tools to access directly.
• AI agents can now interact with customer data without requiring formal exports or separate secure storage systems.
• The Model Context Protocol server from Anthropic, an AI safety company, standardizes integrations across multiple enterprise systems for better interoperability.
• An updated command-line interface streamlines the AI app and agent development process for developers.

In plain English: Think of it like giving AI assistants access to your company’s entire chat history and file sharing—conversations that were previously locked away in individual channels can now be searched and analyzed in real-time to provide smarter, more relevant answers.

The bottom line: These enhancements allow businesses to extract intelligence from conversational data they’ve accumulated over time, potentially transforming decision-making speed and productivity.
• Companies using the upgraded system see 37% quicker team insights and 36% faster customer responses.
• Revenue growth per employee increases by 3x when organizations leverage this unstructured data effectively.

The bigger picture: Salesforce frames Slack as the critical 2% of IT budget that can maximize returns on the remaining 98% of technology investments.
• “By building AI-powered applications directly in Slack, developers and partners help organizations unify their tech stack,” the company explained.
• This positions Slack as a central hub for enterprise AI operations rather than just another collaboration tool.