Salesforce is bringing generative AI to CRM, pledges huge investment
At its first-ever AI Day, CRM software provider Salesforce announced a range of updates and improvements to its existing artificial intelligence portfolio as it looks to capitalize on the $15 trillion that AI is expected to contribute to global economic growth by the end of the decade.
Company CEO Marc Benioff shared details of AI Cloud, which the company describes as “a suite of capabilities optimized for delivering trusted, open, and real-time generative experiences across all applications and workflows.”
With companies having now demonstrated what’s possible with AI, they’re now turning their attention to security and privacy, and Salesforce is just the latest to jump on this trend. Building on Einstein, which the company claims powers more than 1 trillion predictions per week across its applications, Einstein GPT Trust Layer promises to deliver on data security and privacy.
Salesforce AI commitment
The benefits are aplenty, with generative AI looking to be a powerful tool for sales reps, marketers, commerce workers, and developers, but stopping many AI tools from reaching their potential heights is the 73% of workers who believe AI introduces new security risks (according to Salesforce’s in-house research).
Einstein GPT Trust Layer promises to sit between the end user and the large language model (LLM), thus preventing sensitive customer data from ever making its way to the LLM for training or other purposes.
Benioff said in a statement: “AI Cloud, built on the #1 CRM, is the fastest and easiest way for our customers to unleash the incredible power of AI, with trust at the center driven by our new Einstein GPT Trust Layer. AI Cloud will unlock incredible innovation, productivity, and efficiency for every company.”
For many, the appeal of Salesforce is its commitment to an open ecosystem, thus third-party LLMs like those from AWS are supported alongside Salesforce’s own.
As well as Einstein GPT Trust Layer, Salesforce is making Service GPT and Apex GPT generally available this month. Sales GPT and Commerce GPT promise to follow in July, Flow GPT in October, Tableau GPT in November, Slack GPT “later this year,” and Marketing GPT in February 2024.
At the same time, Salesforce announced the doubling of its Generative AI Fund, from $250 million to $500 million, promising to support more startups including the newly added Humane and Tribble as well as increasing investments in existing partners like Anthropic and Cohere.