Salesforce readies Einstein Copilot to unleash generative AI across its offerings

“It’s going to be an open-ended assistant that employees and customers can simply chat with in natural language,” Shih said.

But more than that, Copilot will also be able to trigger specific Salesforce workflows.

Using Copilot Studio, enterprises will be able to control which workflows they want Copilot to have access to, linking to specific database fields they have in Data Cloud. They’ll also be able to customize the behind-the-scenes prompts that drive those workflows, personalizing them to their brand’s voice, Shih said.

Salesforce isn’t the first to come up with the idea of using generative AI to build a virtual coworker or copilot. What sets it apart, according to Stokes, is that, “Some competitors are going after productivity; we’re really going after the core customer workflows, sales, service, commerce, and marketing, where you have a direct interaction with your customer, because that’s our mission.”

Using Salesforce’s Copilot offers several advantages compared to using stand-alone generative AI tools, according to Shih. “Think about change management,” she said. “There’s no training required. You just talk to the assistant like a coworker, and the assistant will ask you if it needs clarification.” The alternative, having employees swivel to a different screen to use a generative bot, and then copy and paste, is not data secure, and is also a hurdle to adoption, she said.

Despite these advances, Einstein Copilot still won’t make you a coffee — but if your coffee machine has an API you can access from the Copilot Studio, you might be able to teach it.