On the same day that Microsoft launched Copilot, Salesforce announced Einstein GPT, its generative AI service that combines Salesforce’s own AI models with external models such as OpenAI’s.  Einstein GPT supports personalized content creation across all of Salesforce’s clouds and Slack.  For example, Generative AI functionality can write personalized sales emails, author customer support responses, compose targeted marketing collateral, and auto-generate code for developers.

“The world is experiencing one of the most profound technological shifts with the rise of real-time technologies and generative AI.  This comes at a pivotal moment as every company is focused on connecting with their customers in more intelligent, automated, and personalized ways,” said CEO Marc Benioff.  “Einstein GPT, in combination with our Data Cloud and integrated in all of our clouds as well as Tableau, MuleSoft, and Slack, is another way we are opening the door to the AI future for all our customers, and we’ll be integrating with OpenAI at launch.”

Einstein GPT is the next generation of Salesforce’s Einstein AI capabilities.  Einstein GPT supports natural-language prompts that “trigger powerful, time-saving automations and create personalized, AI-generated content” within Salesforce.  In addition, each application maintains a human-in-the-loop that reviews and edits client communications before they are sent out.

Einstein GPT reduces “the friction in sales reps wanting to move fast to meet their quota, having to leave Salesforce to send customer communication or do prospecting research, and spending too much time finding information stored in various parts of the CRM,” wrote Salesforce Ben.

New functionality includes:

• Einstein GPT for Sales: Auto-generate sales tasks like composing emails, scheduling meetings, and preparing for the next interaction.  It can also provide external news for prospect research, add contacts not already in Salesforce, and generate additional collaboration channels on Slack.

• Einstein GPT for Service: Generate knowledge articles from past case notes.  Auto-generate personalized agent chat replies to increase customer satisfaction through personalized and expedited service interactions.  Einstein GPT for Service also auto-generates case summaries and knowledge articles from past case notes.

• Einstein GPT for Marketing: Dynamically generate personalized content to engage customers and prospects across email, mobile, web, and advertising.  The service can generate content with brand-compliant images and layouts.  Marketing content can then be uploaded to Experience Builder.

• Einstein GPT for Slack Customer 360 apps: Deliver AI-powered customer insights in Slack (e.g., smart summaries of sales opportunities) and surface end users’ actions.  The Slack service supports writing assistance, background research on accounts, and instant conversation summaries.

• Einstein GPT for Developers: Improve developer productivity with Salesforce Research’s proprietary large language model by using an AI chat assistant to generate code and ask questions for languages like Apex.                                         

“Salesforce can be a powerful multiplier of generative AI experiences because Einstein GPT blends public data with CRM data, and when several million of our customers are all using Einstein GPT, the model gets refined with each instance and becomes more accurate,” explained Salesforce’s SVP of AI and Machine Learning Jayesh Govindarajan.  “It’s a cumulative effect and is really a huge differentiator for Salesforce.”

Salesforce is also looking to establish an AI ecosystem, with OpenAI as the first integration.

“Einstein GPT will infuse Salesforce’s proprietary AI models with generative AI technology from an ecosystem of partners and real-time data from the Salesforce Data Cloud, which ingests, harmonizes, and unifies all of a company’s customer data,” announced Salesforce.  “With Einstein GPT, customers can then connect that data to OpenAI’s advanced AI models out of the box or choose their own external model and use natural-language prompts directly within their Salesforce CRM to generate content that continuously adapts to changing customer information and needs in real-time.”

As part of the announcement, Salesforce established a $250 million venture fund to develop “responsible, trusted, and generative AI.”

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said using ChatGPT in CRM services “allows us to learn more about real-world usage, which is critical to the responsible development and deployment of AI—a belief that Salesforce shares with us.”

“It will be fascinating to watch how this plays out,” opined Fortune editor David Meyer.  “On the one hand, we’re now in the territory of serious businesses using generative AI for serious things, as opposed to playing around to see how long it takes to get a chatbot to say something offensive.  On the other hand, some of these applications involve customers who may have some curveball questions.  And it’s worth remembering that generative AI technology like OpenAI’s ChatGPT will occasionally ‘hallucinate,’ that is, basically make up fake information.”

“In theory, Microsoft’s and Salesforce’s new offerings should be safer to use because they only draw on information from companies’ own websites and internal databases—the customer-facing elements will in that sense be a bit like those Google search boxes in websites,” continued Meyer.  “But that won’t necessarily make these AIs immune to occasionally emitting bogus information.  Companies will find out soon enough how carefully they need to monitor their new copilots.”

Einstein GPT is in closed pilot. 

A ChatGPT for Slack app is in beta.  The ChatGPT app was built by OpenAI on the Slack platform and “delivers instant conversation summaries, research tools, and writing assistance directly in Slack.”