Slack's Rob Seaman says 2026 will mark true adoption of agentic AI

Slack chief product officer Rob Seaman explains how Slackbot is bringing agentic AI into daily workflows, improving productivity, creativity, and collaboration across enterprises, including in India

Rob Seaman, global executive and chief product officer, Slack, the popular communications platform from Salesforce, believes that the year 2026 will see true adoption of agentic AI, where humans and agents will work together. In a video interview with Shivani Shinde, he talks about the recent launch of Slackbot — the built-in AI agent within Slack — and how agents are creating enterprise value and trends on agentic AI among employees. Edited excerpts:

Q: With Slackbot what changes at Slack?

Slack started as a channel-based communication tool, but the way we think about Slack today is as the conversational interface for what we call the modern enterprise. We see it as the place where humans, agents, and all the apps people need inside an enterprise come together to get work done. 

We think of Slackbot as your personal agent for work. It deeply understands you, your company, your voice and tone, and what you are working on, and it helps you get things done. It is a marquee example of how we are bringing agents into the flow of work, connected to everything I mentioned. 

The key value of Slackbot is that it delivers trusted, contextual intelligence right in the flow of work. It helps people prepare and make decisions, but it can also take action. It can book meetings, write documents, and add items to lists, so it helps you move faster. It is different because it has deep organisational context inside Slack. It can access what you can access, so it knows what you are working on, what you are privy to, and what your company’s priorities and top projects are. That makes it extremely powerful in delivering business value. 

This has been in pilot for close to two months. We have it deployed internally at Salesforce, where tens of thousands of weekly active users — including our leadership and employees — use it every day. It is shaping how work happens across product design, engineering, sales, and marketing.

Q: What is the biggest differentiating factor for Slackbot compared with other agentic AI co-workers?

It comes down to how people use Slack. At Salesforce, we have a channel for every customer, every feature, every campaign, every team, and every leader. When I use Slackbot, it has access to all of that. It knows what features my team is building, which customers I am working with, and it has access to the systems connected to my Slack — Google Drive, GitHub, and so on. 

That deep context means it understands how I work. It is a force multiplier.

Q: What feedback have early customers given you? What kind of productivity gain or time saving are clients seeing?

One customer told us this is the first AI deployment they have seen that truly augments humans. I cannot give you an exact average, but between information retrieval, discovery, and synthesis, someone using it daily could easily save two to four hours a week.

Q: Since Slackbot improves productivity have you seen this impacting team sizes?

We are not building it to reduce team sizes, and we have seen no evidence of that. It improves productivity, but it also improves creativity. Product managers, sales teams, and marketers use it as a brainstorming and creative partner. It saves time, but it also improves the quality of work and outcomes.

Q: What are some of the trends are you seeing in agentic AI and workforce?

We are seeing a bunch of people moving their agents into Slack. We have hundreds of thousands of agents being deployed inside Slack, which shows that conversational interfaces are here to stay. The other thing is that the channel structure works very well for agents. Another trend we see is agents becoming more autonomous — responding to system changes and updates, not just prompts. This will ultimately lead to humans managing teams of agents — we are seeing this in practice.

Q: How important is India for Slackbot?

India is one of our biggest growth markets and very important for us. We are excited about the value Slackbot can create there. We have development teams in India that work across the features of Slack, and I would say Slackbot is a company-wide effort. India remains a centre that we continue to invest in.

Q: What are your three big predictions for agents and humans over the next few years?

We are still in an early stage when it comes to adopting agents. To me, this year is about true adoption, with humans and agents working together. Over the next two to three years, we will see agents becoming more autonomous, agents talking to each other, and humans managing teams of agents.