Salesforce updates Einstein 1 Platform with unified business data

Today, Salesforce announced significant updates to its Einstein 1 Platform that will unify business data to help inform AI prompts for those who use the Einstein Copilot AI assistant.

The company also announced improved AI search capabilities through Einstein Copilot Search, available February 2024.

Both structured and unstructured business data will be unified by the newly-announced Data Cloud Vector Database, which will be built into Einstein 1 Platform.

Einstein 1 Platform provides conversational AI to every cloud, including sales, service, marketing and commerce. Some genAI capabilities are currently available or in beta, while others will be rolled out in 2024.

Why we care. This year, Salesforce began introducing its generative AI chatbot, Einstein GPT, to Marketing and Commerce clouds. The goal was to make conversational AI available across all clouds in every industry. With Einstein 1 Platform, Salesforce is getting closer to that goal. But for the AI assistant to be helpful, the business data needs to be unified. And that includes unstructured data hidden across an organization, buried in emails, Slack chats and documents. Data Cloud Vector Database will unify this data for those using the Einstein 1 Platform.

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Data Cloud Vector Database. Built into Einstein 1 Platform, Data Cloud Vector Database makes it easy for users to bring in business data from the CRM, as well as unstructured data from PDFs, emails and transcripts, all to ground AI prompts with unified data that doesn’t require expensive updates to a specific business’s large language model (LLM).

Data Cloud will power Einstein Copilot Search and will help businesses use the unified data to inform workflows, analytics and automation across every Salesforce application.

Einstein Copilot Search. Available in February, this tool will use enhanced AI capabilities to respond to complex queries by using diverse data sources, including unstructured data. It will also provide citations to source material, to maintain user confidence.

Customer service. Although Einstein 1 Platform capabilities will cover a broad range of marketing and sales functions, an immediate use case falls under customer service. Einstein Copilot Search will be able to take real-time call transcripts and emails (unstructured data) and update a customer’s support ticket history (structured data). This will give service agents more data to better understand a customer’s issue and cut down on help time.

Einstein Copilot can also power a customer-facing chatbot, improving customer experience for self-service on a company’s website or app.

“As we plan for the road ahead, Salesforce AI will help us serve members more efficiently across the company, including our insurance business, by distilling complex insurance policies into swift, customer-centric responses, delivering faster support for clients and increasing productivity for agents,” said Shohreh Abedi, EVP, Chief Operations Technology Officer, and Member Experience at AAA — The Auto Club Group.