Slack Messaging Service to Add IBM Watson Smarts

Slack Technologies Inc., a business messaging provider, is the latest company to partner with International Business Machines Corp. to add artificial intelligence to its service.

Slack plans to improve Slackbot, its customer-service bot, using IBM's Watson, a collection of artificial-intelligence software delivered as cloud-computing services, the two companies said on Wednesday. The messaging company will use Watson Conversation, an IBM service that processes natural language, to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the bot, which helps Slack users troubleshoot problems.

These and other enhancements will be available to users early next year, Slack said.

The partnership between Slack and IBM comes amid a spate of alliances involving Watson. IBM in recent days announced partnerships with General Motors Co. and Quest Diagnostics Inc. as well as an expanded collaboration with Apple Inc.

IBM itself takes advantage of Slack. About 30,000 Big Blue employees use the service, up from about 5,000 at the beginning of the year, according to Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield.

"IBM is one of our bigger customers," he added.

Together, the companies are creating software tools intended to make it easier for coders to enhance Slack with Watson's capabilities. For example, they plan to offer a starter kit that provides aids such as example code and step-by-step instructions for building on Slack. IBM will release software that lets its Watson Conversation service, which interprets text input in natural language, interact with Slackbot and other Slack messaging channels.

Write to Rachael King at [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 26, 2016 01:15 ET (05:15 GMT)

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