News

Salesforce Borrows 'Copilot' Moniker for its New Einstein AI

• By David Ramel
• 09/15/2023

It looks like Microsoft/GitHub might have coined the standard moniker for AI assistants going forward, as Salesforce this week debuted new "Einstein Copilot" AI tech.

The "Copilot" term adorned an early tool that helped kicked off the generative AI-assisted computing age, GitHub Copilot, and was subsequently borrowed by GitHub owner Microsoft for a whole raft of products and services.

Whether it becomes an industry standard term for AI assistants remains to be seen, but this week Salesforce used it to name its conversational generative AI assistant that will be available in every Salesforce app, integrating tightly with the company's Data Cloud.

"Einstein Copilot will drive productivity by assisting users within their flow of work, enabling them to ask questions in natural language, and receive relevant and trustworthy answers that are grounded in secure proprietary company data from Salesforce Data Cloud," the company said in a Sept. 12 news release. "In addition, Einstein Copilot proactively offers options for additional actions beyond the user's query -- such as a recommended action plan after a sales call, or creating a new service knowledge article."

Also part of the initiative is Einstein Copilot Studio, used to build AI-powered apps with all the AI trappings including functionality like custom prompts skills, AI models and so on. Studio components to do all that include:

• Prompt Builder: Prompt Builder will let users build, test, and deploy generative AI prompts that match their company's brand and communication style, all without requiring deep technical expertise.
• Skills Builder: Skills Builder will enable companies to create custom AI-driven actions that complete specific tasks.
• Model Builder: Companies require the flexibility to select their own AI models (BYOM) for their specific business needs. Model Builder will let customers select one of Salesforce's proprietary LLMs, or seamlessly integrate preferred predictive and generative partner AI models, and train or fine-tune them on data in Data Cloud without moving or copying data.

"Einstein Copilot Studio also provides configurability to make Einstein Copilot available for use across other consumer-facing channels like websites to power real-time chat, Slack, WhatsApp, or SMS," the company said.

Both Einstein Copilot and Einstein Copilot Studio will go through pilot programs, testing their operation within the company's secure AI architecture natively built into Salesforce called the Einstein Trust Layer. The company said it helps teams generate higher-quality AI results by grounding responses with customer data, while at the same time preserving an organization's data privacy and security standards.

The company indicated Einstein Copilot is currently in pilot while Einstein Copilot Studio will be in pilot in Fall 2023. Einstein Trust Layer enhancements, meanwhile will hit general availability next month and be included in all Einstein products.

On the same day, the company announced the Einstein 1 Platform, which it said features major advancements for Salesforce Data Cloud and Einstein AI capabilities, all built on Salesforce's underlying metadata framework. "A trusted AI platform for customer companies, the Einstein 1 Platform gives companies the ability to safely connect any data to build AI-powered apps with low-code and deliver entirely new CRM experiences," the company said.