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Salesforce Launches Trusted Generative AI for Customers in Slack

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Salesforce today announced the rollout of Slack AI, a trusted and intuitive generative AI experience available natively in Slack, where work happens. Customers can easily tap into the collective knowledge shared in Slack through guided experiences for AI-powered search, channel recaps, thread summaries, and soon, a digests feature. These capabilities will enable customers to find answers, distill knowledge, and spark ideas faster.
Why it matters: Nearly half of digital workers struggle to find the information they need to efficiently do their jobs, according to Gartner. This, paired with an increasing number of tools and ways to exchange ideas, adds to workers’ cognitive load and makes it difficult to catch up quickly and feel on top of the work day. AI holds enormous potential to make internal knowledge more contextual, relevant, and easier to find and prioritise.
The Slack CEO perspective: “For the past decade, Slack has revolutionised the way we work, bringing people, apps, and systems together in one place,” said Denise Dresser, CEO of Slack. “With Slack AI, we’re excited to take this transformation to the next level. These new AI capabilities empower our customers to access the collective knowledge within Slack so they can work smarter, move faster, and spend their time on things that spark real innovation and growth. In the era of generative AI, Slack is the trusted, conversational platform that connects every part of a business to supercharge team productivity.”
Innovation in action: Starting today, Slack AI’s search and summarisation capabilities can help customers easily find and consume large volumes of information quickly. These features are trustworthy, easy to use, and require no training. Users initiate them through guided, contextual interactions, ensuring they don’t have to learn brand new skills to enjoy the benefits. And each output is secure, cited, and personalised to the user. With Slack AI, customers can access:

  • AI-powered search that delivers personalised, intelligent responses to any question: Users can ask a question conversationally and get a concise answer based on relevant Slack messages. Users can find what they need faster, whether they want to learn about a new marketing campaign, get up to speed on company policies, glean insights about past decisions from historical context, or define unfamiliar acronyms.
  • Channel recaps that generate key highlights from accessible channels: Users can catch up on unread messages, summarise the last seven days, or set a custom date range to summarise. Users can quickly catch up after time away from work, get up to speed on a new project, or jump in quickly to help resolve time-sensitive issues.
  • Thread summaries that catch users up on long conversations: Users can get the gist of a long conversation in one click, and clear sources are included in each summary, allowing users to dive deeper into a highlight. Users can instantly summarise key decisions and next steps from a thread with a lot of back and forth, get up to speed on a customer support ticket, or catch up on a team stand-up to get a bird’s eye view of priorities.
Sales spotlight: Sales teams are under pressure to streamline their operations and maximize team effectiveness. With Slack AI, sales reps can”
  • Easily identify and bring in the right subject matter expert when a customer has a specific question or concern during a deal cycle.
  • Summarise an account channel and get the context they need to prepare for a customer meeting more effectively.
  • Generate key takeaways from a long discussion about deal progress to help keep the team on track.
Engineering spotlight: The incident management process can be time consuming and complex. With Slack AI, engineering teams can:
  • Find answers in past incident channels to uncover potential solutions and apply learnings.
  • Get the right information they need so they can quickly get situated and jump in to help find a resolution.
  • Recap an incident channel and use it as a starting point to draft a root-cause analysis faster.

Slack’s trusted and secure AI experience: Trust is the number one value at Salesforce, and Slack is committed to building AI products safely, responsibly, and ethically.

  • Slack AI runs on Slack’s infrastructure and upholds the same security practices and compliance standards that customers expect.
  • Slack AI’s large language models (LLMs) are hosted directly within Slack, ensuring customer data remains in-house and exclusively for that organisation’s use.
  • Customer data remains siloed and will not be used to serve other clients, directly or indirectly.
  • Slack AI does not use customer data for LLM training purposes.

The future of native generative AI in Slack: More features that help users summarise and prioritise information are on the horizon. Soon, Slack AI will create digests summarising key highlights from channels that users want to stay informed on but may not require immediate attention, enabling them to stay up to speed on what they could otherwise miss while focusing on their top priorities. Additionally, Slack is building a native AI integration with Einstein Copilot, a new conversational AI assistant for Salesforce CRM, that will provide answers to questions directly in Slack that are grounded in trusted customer data.

These new search and summarisation features are just the beginning of how Slack will enable people to work smarter and faster. In the future, Slack will be the command center for work and the conversational interface for generative AI.
Slack’s AI-ready platform: In addition to these native AI capabilities, partners are bringing additional AI functionality into their Slack apps. Available today, upgraded AI-powered apps from Slack’s partner ecosystem allow users to ask PagerDuty Copilot for help resolving incidents, automatically summarise Notion documents in link previews, and more. And coming soon, a brand new AI integration with Perplexity will allow users to subscribe to AI-powered insights and pipe them into Slack.
What they’re saying:

  • “Slack AI is not only a huge productivity boost — it’s easy to use, right where we already work in Slack. Our team loves how quickly they can find answers, which translates to faster decision-making and a greater focus on work that really drives an impact.” – Kate Earle Jensen, Head of Sales and Partnerships, Anthropic
  • “During the pilot program, we experienced firsthand the major productivity gains that Slack AI could drive for our business. Slack AI has helped speed up our employees’ work exponentially.” – Zach Hyman, Co-CEO, SpotOn
  • “At Perplexity, we’re building the next generation answer engine, applying the most advanced LLMs to make knowledge instant and accessible. Now with Perplexity Push, we’re delivering an enterprise integration that brings AI-powered insights directly into Slack. Teams can easily stay in-the-know on topics they care about where conversations and collaboration already happens.” – Aravind Srinivas, CEO, Perplexity
  • “Slack AI helps users unlock the full potential of company knowledge in Slack, all while supporting existing security, privacy, and compliance controls.” — Irwin Lazar, President and Principal Analyst, Metrigy

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Ugo Onwuaso is an ICT enthusiast. He believes technology should be used for general good. He holds a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from the Lagos state University. Dear Reader, Your support matters. But we believe that technology makes life more exciting and helps improve the lives of people around Nigeria and indeed the world. That is why, we have devoted our energy to independent reportage of technology and finance and how they affect lives. Our incisive and analytical view of how technology news affects the daily life help individuals and organizations make up their minds. Quality journalism costs money. Today, we're asking that you support us to do more. Kindly support our effort to deliver technology and finance journalism to everyone in the world. Donate as little as N1,000. Bank transfers can be made to: UBA Plc 1017156876 Communication Week Media Ltd

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MTN Nigeria Invests N202.4Bn in Q1 2025 to Enhance Network Capacity

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MTN Nigeria Communications Plc has invested N202.4 billion in capital expenditure (Capex) in the first quarter of 2025, marking a 159 per cent increase compared to the same period last year.

MTN

The investment, according to the company’s unaudited financial results for the quarter ended March 31, is aimed at improving network infrastructure and enhancing service delivery to customers across the country.

The telecom giant recorded a 40.5 per cent growth in service revenue, driven by strong demand and strategic commercial execution. Data revenue surged by 51.5 per cent, supported by a growing active user base and increased data consumption.

In its fintech division, MTN Nigeria reported a 57.9 per cent rise in revenue, attributed to the strong performance of airtime lending services and higher float income.

However, its active wallet base declined by 25.7 per cent to 2.1 million, reflecting the company’s focus on quality over quantity in customer acquisition.

Despite challenges in the broader economy, MTN Nigeria posted a profit after tax of N133.7 billion, recovering from a loss of N392.7 billion in the previous year. Its EBITDA increased by 65.9 per cent, with the EBITDA margin expanding to 46.6 per cent.

Karl Toriola, chief executive officer, MTN Nigeria expressed confidence in the company’s trajectory, stating: “We are pleased with our performance in the first quarter of 2025, which reflects the continued execution of our strategic priorities and the resilience of demand for our services.

“Building on the momentum from Q4 2024, our Q1 results place us firmly on the path to restoring profitability and achieving a positive net asset position within the current financial year, while increasing our investments to improve network and service quality.”

With a free cash flow of N209.9 billion, MTN Nigeria maintains a solid funding and liquidity position, reinforcing its market leadership in the telecommunications sector.

 


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MTN Nigeria Reports N1 Trillion Revenue

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Karl Toriola, chief executive officer, MTN Nigeria
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MTN Nigeria Communications Plc has said it generated N1.0 trillion in service revenue in the first quarter of 2025, a 40.5 per cent increase from the N752.99 billion earned in Q1 2024.

MTN Nigeria Reports N1 Trillion Revenue

MTN Nigeria said this in a corporate filing with the Nigerian Exchange Ltd. on Tuesday.

However, the company’s after tax dropped by 134 per cent, falling to N133.7 billion from N392.7 billion in the same period of 2024.

Its total subscriber base grew by 8.2 per cent to 84.1 million, with 3.2 million new additions in Q1 2025.

MTN Nigeria also said the number of its active data users rose by 13 per cent to 50.3 million, following the addition of 2.6 million users.

EBITDA climbed 65.9 per cent to N492.7 billion, while EBITDA margin improved by 7.2 percentage points to 46.6 per cent.

The company recorded free cash flow of N209.9 billion and earnings per share stood at N6.38.

Karl Toriola, MTN Nigeria CEO, expressed satisfaction with the Q1 2025 results, citing strong strategic execution and resilient service demand.

He said momentum from Q4 2024 had helped put the firm on track to restore profitability and achieve a positive net asset position.

He added that regulatory approval for price adjustments was essential to sustain investment and maintain service quality.

This approval enabled N202.4 billion in capital expenditure, up 159 per cent, aimed at expanding capacity and enhancing user experience.

Toriola said the 40.5 per cent growth in service revenue underscored strong demand and commercial discipline.

He noted that Q1 results do not yet reflect the full impact of price changes made late in the quarter.

 

 


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Lawmakers, Telcos in Heated Debate over Kidnapping, Phone Related Crimes

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Some federal lawmakers, yesterday, exchanged heated arguments with telecom operators in the country over the roles they are supposed to play to stem the tide of incessant kidnapping and other phone-related crimes in the country.

Lawmakers, Telcos in Heated Debate over Kidnapping, Phone Related Crimes

The lawmakers said the telcos were not doing enough to track kidnappers, despite the number of calls they make to victims’ families demanding ransom.

However, the telcos swifty responded that the lawmakers were mistaking them for security agencies, instead of the telecommunications services providers they were, clarifying that their duties were to provide telecom services to their subscribers and not to catch criminals.

They  however, clarified that where and whenever the security agencies had needed their support or services in information that would lead to locating or arresting kidnappers and other criminals, who perpetrated crimes through mobile phones, they had gladly and freely rendered result-oriented support.

The scene played out at the first day of the two-day colloquium on the Nigerian Communications Act, NCA 2003, at Sheraton Hotels, Ikeja, Lagos, with the theme “22 years after: Reassessing the Nigerian Communications Act –Challenges, Opportunities, and Future Directions for a Digital Nigeria”

Ben Etanabene, member of House of Representatives, representing Okpe, Sapele and Uvwie federal constituency, Delta State, was the first to throw the salvo, wondering why despite all the money and time expended in registering phone lines in the country, kidnappers were still operating freely without telcos tracking them.

“Every part of this country, kidnappers are on the rampage, kidnapping and making demands for ransom. Why are the telecom operators not tracking and helping in arresting them before they wreak havoc?” he queried.

Etanabene, who claimed to have been a victim of kidnappers in the past, queried why the telcos and the NCC couldn’t provide geo-location services that would ensure kidnappers were located and nabbed before they carried out their actions, even when all over the world, technology deployment stemmed same crime.

Corroborating him, Ayodele Festus, another member of House of Representatives, who represents Ile-Oluji in Ondo State, said the telcos should improve their services.

He alleged that the telcos were smiling to the bank at the expense of subscribers, who hardly finish a call without it dropping at least five times.

He alleged that there was an increase in customer dissatisfaction because, according to him, “millions of subscribers are deeply frustrated.”

Also, Mr Moshood Olawale, yet another member representing Lagos Mainland in the House of Representatives, alleged that while it was expected that the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), and the telcos collaborated for the progress of the sector, what appeared to be playing out was connivance, explaining why telecom tariff goes up instead of coming down.

However, in a swift reaction, Gbenga Adebayo, chairman of Association of Licenced Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), punctured the claims of the lawmakers, saying operators were doing a lot to stem phone-related crimes in the country.

Adebayo said: “In the first instance, we are clearly telecom services providers and do not have the mandate to run around arresting criminals.

“Again, kidnappers usually don’t use their own numbers to call families of their kidnapped victims for ransom. Rather, they use the phone of the kidnapped, while moving from one point to another.

“Then, also remember that there is a privacy law, which gives every subscriber right to privacy until there is a lawful reason to intercept their conversations.

“The worst is that the security agencies have not come to ask for geo-location of event and we refused giving it out. At least, there is Law of Lawful Interception, which gives them right in that regard.’’

Also responding, Tobechukwu Okigbo, Corporate Service Executive, MTN Nigeria,  told the lawmakers that in terms of affordability, Nigeria was one of the cheapest country with very low tariff in Africa, meaning that their allegation that Nigerians paid the highest price for telecom services was not based on empirical facts.

He also reminded the lawmakers to consider legislating on telecom infrastructure protection which would nip the cases of theft and incessant fibre cuts and vandalism, in the bud.

On his part, Dr. Aminu Maida,  executive vice chairman of NCC, corrected the impression that the commission was conniving with telcos but stressed the importance of collaboration of the two bodies to deliver quality services to Nigerians.

 

Credit – Vanguard


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