Announced at TrailblazerDX 2023, Salesforce launched Einstein GPT to deliver auto-generated AI content, right within the Salesforce platform. There are many use cases for Einstein GPT, including Slack, sales, service, marketing, commerce, and app builders. This is the world’s most powerful, intelligent, generative CRM – making every employee more productive and every customer experience better.
In this article, I’ll go over everything you need to know about Einstein AI.
What is Einstein GPT?
Einstein GPT is a powerful AI tool that combines public and private AI models with CRM data. This allows users to ask natural-language prompts directly within Salesforce CRM. The result is AI-generated content that is continuously adapted to changing customer information and needs. This can save users a significant amount of time, as they no longer have to manually create content.
What do we mean by public and private AI models? Einstein GPT infuses:
- Salesforce’s private AI models: In other words, those developed by Salesforce, which is leveraged by customers using features from the Einstein technology layer.
- Combining OpenAI’s ChatGPT: Thanks to the Salesforce and OpenAI partnership, providing out-of-the-box generative AI capabilities to companies through direct access to OpenAI’s enterprise-grade ChatGPT technology.
- Bring your own model: As Einstein GPT is open and extensible, you can opt to use it alongside your own external model/s.
Data is being pumped into these models, in real-time, from Salesforce ‘clouds’, and the Salesforce Data Cloud to ingest, harmonize, and unify all of a company’s customer data.
Salesforce Copilot
At Dreamforce 2023, Salesforce announced Einstein Copilot, which is seamlessly integrated into the side panel of any Salesforce application’s user interface. This means that both internal users and customers, including those using Experience Cloud portals, can engage with this conversational AI assistant using natural language, just like they would when conversing with a human.
Moreover, Copilot extends its functionality by providing suggestions akin to the ‘next best action’ concept that has been familiar since around 2017, courtesy of Einstein. However, in this case, the recommendations take the form of multi-step action plans, allowing users to choose or remove follow-up actions they wish to pursue.
Many of the front-end features targeted at Salesforce users, and the backend features that allow Salesforce professionals to customize the GPT functionality, is based around Einstein Copilot.
Copilot Studio
Einstein Copilot studio is a suite of tools that helps businesses build and deploy AI-powered applications. It includes three components: Prompt Builder, Skills Builder, and Model Builder.
With Copilot Studio, you gain both authority and command – the authority to implement impactful generative AI to enhance user productivity, while maintaining control over which processes utilize generative AI and the extent of its prompt influence.
For instance, when a user queries Einstein Copilot and doesn’t receive a response, it prompts the question: Did the user have the authorization to access that information? If the answer is yes, you can leverage the Skills Builder, which we’ll discuss shortly.
In essence, this technology also places the information squarely in your hands as the admin, enabling you to steer clear of potential adverse outcomes associated with generative AI, such as toxicity, bias, and hallucinations.
Prompt Builder
Salesforce Prompt Builder is a new feature in Salesforce that lets you create prompts to generate personalized content. These prompts are like short questions you ask Salesforce to make content for you, such as personalized emails, social media posts, or website pages.
It works with a big AI model that understands natural language and creates informative and engaging content.
Instead of giving users a blank slate like ChatGPT, it uses templates for specific situations, like “Write an introduction email to this customer” or “Write a follow-up email to this case.”
To use Prompt Builder, you just type a question, like “generate a personalized email to my customer Chris Smith,” and it makes an email tailored to Chris Smith.
Benefits of Salesforce Prompt Builder:
- Personalized content: It tailors content to specific customers, improving engagement and sales.
- Engaging content: Generates relevant and interesting content to keep customers engaged.
- Sales-driving content: Creates persuasive content to boost sales.
It’s a powerful tool for enhancing customer engagement and sales, but it’s important to use it ethically and ensure the generated content is accurate and non-discriminatory.
Skills Builder
Skills Builder is a low-code tool in the Einstein 1 platform that allows businesses to create custom AI-driven actions that complete specific tasks. Just think of them as permission sets but for your Generative AI prompts. They ensure the right people in your organization can use the right prompts.
Skills Builder works by using a drag-and-drop interface to connect data sources, pre-built AI models, and custom code. This makes it easy for businesses to create AI skills without having to write any code.
Skills Builder can be used to create a wide variety of AI skills, such as:
- Generating leads
- Qualifying leads
- Predicting customer churn
- Recommending products or services
- Automating customer service tasks
- Creating personalized marketing campaigns
Model Builder
Einstein Model Builder is a tool that lets businesses use AI effectively without compromising data privacy. It integrates your data with external AI models, allowing you to benefit from AI’s power while keeping your data secure. It also works with the Einstein GPT Trust Layer for added security and compliance.
Using the Bring Your Own Model (BYOM) approach, data teams can easily create and use custom AI models in Salesforce. This enhances applications with AI predictions and auto-generated content, making processes more efficient. BYOM simplifies AI integration and model training, saving time and resources. It works with existing data across different departments like sales, service, marketing, and IT, without complicated integration.
Einstein Model Builder has a user-friendly interface for integrating external AI models with your CRM data. It helps you choose the right model type, whether building a new one, connecting an existing SageMaker or Google Vertex AI model, or linking a model from another platform.
This tool simplifies the process of combining your data with preferred AI models, making AI insights actionable. Salesforce is committed to an open ecosystem, allowing organizations to choose their preferred AI providers.
Einstein GPT Trust Layer
The Einstein GPT Trust Layer is a new industry standard for trusted enterprise AI that is part of AI Cloud. It allows organizations to benefit from generative AI while also being reassured about data privacy and security. This is because the Einstein GPT Trust Layer prevents large-language models (LLMs) from retaining sensitive customer data.
Multiple Salesforce executives have expressed that trust and privacy were the primary starting point when designing their generative AI capabilities – a standpoint they believe differentiates them from most of the market.
Salesforce has done work to adhere to data privacy and confidentiality. One example is product description generation in Commerce GPT. The process happens at the time of the query (prompt), where the most limited amount of data gets passed over the wall to the LLMs that power the generative capabilities. This is self-destructive, and as a result, customer data never leaves the Salesforce cloud products where it’s stored.
This separation of sensitive data from the LLM will help customers maintain data governance controls while still leveraging the immense potential of generative AI.
Anecdotes from Salesforce executives follow the same thread – that Salesforce customers are more willing to pilot generative-AI technology when they become aware of the ‘safety net’ that Salesforce has incorporated (as opposed to remaining hesitant if it were an open API call out to other providers).
The following diagram shows how the Einstein GPT Trust Layer works:
As depicted in the diagram above, the Trust Layer of Einstein GPT addresses the apprehensions regarding risks that come with adopting generative AI. It accomplishes this by allowing customers to fulfill their enterprise data security and compliance requirements, while still reaping the advantages of generative AI.
There are some phrases in the above diagram that you may be unfamiliar with, so below I’ve broken some of them down:
- Prompt: A piece of text that is used to guide the generation of text. It can be as simple as a single word or phrase, or it can be a more complex set of instructions.
- Dynamic Grounding: A technique in natural language processing that allows a model to understand the context of a word or phrase based on the surrounding text. This is in contrast to static grounding, which relies on a pre-defined dictionary or thesaurus to map words to their meanings.
- Data Masking: Data masking is a process of replacing sensitive data with non-sensitive data, also known as placeholders, to protect the confidentiality of the data.
- Toxicity: In the context of generative AI, toxicity refers to the production of harmful or offensive content.
Einstein AI Suite of Products
Sales Cloud Einstein
Salesforce Sales Cloud Einstein is designed to help sales teams create more personalized and engaging content. It can be used to generate content that is tailored to specific customers or audiences, and it can also be used to create content that is relevant to the latest trends and news.
Sales Cloud Einstein offers the following features:
- Sales Assistant: The tool summarizes every step of the sales cycle in a side panel, from account research and meeting preparation to drafting contract clauses. It also automatically keeps the CRM up-to-date, so you can be sure that your sales data is always accurate and up-to-date.
- Sales Emails: The tool can automatically generate personalized emails for every customer interaction, using data from your CRM system. This means that you can send emails that are tailored to the specific needs and interests of your customers.
- Call Summaries: The tool automatically transcribes and summarizes calls, and then sets follow-up actions based on the transcription. This can help to improve seller productivity by freeing up time that would otherwise be spent manually transcribing calls and setting follow-up actions.
Einstein for Service
Salesforce Einstein for Service is a generative AI tool that can be used to improve customer service and field service operations. It can help to improve customer satisfaction, reduce costs, increase productivity, and make better decisions.
Einstein for Service offers the following features:
- Service Replies: The tool can automatically generate personalized responses based on real-time data sources, such as your CRM data and other sources. This means that you can send responses that are tailored to the specific needs and interests of your customers.
- Work Summaries: Create concise and informative summaries of service cases and customer engagements based on the details of the case and the customer’s history.
- Call Summaries: The tool automatically transcribes and summarizes calls, and then sets follow-up actions based on the transcription. This can help to improve seller productivity by freeing up time that would otherwise be spent manually transcribing calls and setting follow-up actions.
- Knowledge Articles: The tool can automatically generate and update articles based on the latest real-time data from support interactions. This means that the articles are always up-to-date with the latest information and best practices.
- Mobile Work Briefings: The tool summarizes critical information about each appointment before field service teams arrive, helping them to work more efficiently. This information includes the customer’s contact information, the issue that needs to be resolved, and any relevant history.
- Engagement: Einstein for Service can be used to generate content that is relevant to the latest trends and news. This can help to keep customers engaged and coming back for more.
Einstein for Marketing
With Einstein for Marketing, Salesforce aims to give marketers an AI-connected user interface that augments campaign brief conception, audience/segment discovery, and content creation.
Einstein for Marketing offers the following features:
- Segment Creation: Marketers are given the ability to create audience segments quickly and improve targeting using natural language prompts to query Data Cloud, Salesforce’s CDP offering.
- Email Content Creation: This gives marketers the ability to build email body content, create subject lines, and more, automagically.
- Segment Intelligence: Segment Intelligence steps in to help marketers understand campaign performance, relative to an audience segment.
Commerce Cloud Einstein
Commerce Cloud Einstein is a generative AI tool that can be used to provide personalized commerce experiences throughout the entire buyer’s journey.
It can be used to generate auto-generated recommendations, content, and communications that are based on real-time data from the Data Cloud. This ensures that the recommendations and content are relevant and timely.
Commerce Cloud Einstein offers the following features:
- Goals-Based Commerce: This tool empowers businesses to set targets and goals, and then provides actionable insights and proactive recommendations on how to meet them – for example, to improve margins or to increase average order value (AOV).
- Dynamic Product Descriptions: With Commerce Cloud Einstein, alleviating the work of creating product descriptions, new storefronts are faster than ever to ‘stand up’. It can also automatically fill in missing catalog data for merchants and revolutionize the customer experience with auto-generated product descriptions tailored to every buyer.
- Commerce Concierge: This application experience built on top of Commerce Cloud Einstein uses bot technology and generative technology to help brands deliver a 1:1 shopper experience on any messaging channel.
Commerce Cloud Einstein is a powerful tool that can help brands create more engaging and personalized shopping experiences for their customers. It is a key part of Salesforce’s vision for the future of commerce, which is to provide customers with the ability to shop seamlessly across channels.
Slack AI
Slack is a cloud-based communication platform that helps teams to collaborate more effectively. It provides a centralized space where teams can communicate in real time, share files, and collaborate on projects. Slack can also be integrated with other tools and services, which allows teams to streamline their workflows and work more efficiently.
Customers rely on Slack to store their institutional knowledge in channels dedicated to each project, team, or topic. They also securely integrate their tools in Slack using our open, extensible platform and partner ecosystem. Slack AI is being built on this same foundation, bringing trusted generative AI to where your team already works: in Slack.
Slack AI offers the following features:
- An AI-ready platform to integrate and automate with your language model of choice, whether you use partner-built apps such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude or build your own custom integration.
- A set of AI features built directly in Slack, including AI-powered conversation summaries and writing assistance
- A new Einstein GPT app that lets you surface AI-powered customer insights from trusted Salesforce Customer 360 data and Data Cloud.
Tableau AI
Tableau is a data visualization and business intelligence software that allows users to connect to various data sources, create interactive dashboards, and generate insightful reports. It helps users analyze, understand, and communicate data in a visual and interactive format.
Tableau is a powerful tool that can be used by businesses of all sizes. It is easy to use and does not require any coding knowledge. Tableau can be used to connect to a wide range of data sources, including databases, spreadsheets, and cloud services.
Tableau AI is a new feature that is being added to Tableau. It uses generative AI to automate many of the tasks involved in data analysis. This makes it easier for users to analyze data and create visualizations.
Tableau AI is still under development, but it has the potential to revolutionize the way data is analyzed. It could make data analysis more accessible to a wider range of users and help businesses make better decisions based on data.
Einstein for Developers
Einstein for Developers is a generative AI tool that helps developers and IT teams to improve software development speed and efficiency.
It is unique because it’s integrated into the Salesforce Platform. This integration allows it to use your organization’s code information to provide tailored coding suggestions. It also comes with the AI Trust Layer to ensure the security of your code. In simple terms, it’s a smart tool that understands your code and helps you write it better while keeping everything safe.
Einstein for Developers also has the ability to scan for code vulnerabilities and provide inline code suggestions directly from the Salesforce integrated development environment (IDE). This can help to improve the quality of code and reduce the risk of errors.
Overall, Einstein for Developers is a powerful tool that can help developers to improve their productivity and the quality of their code.
Einstein for Flow
Einstein for Flow is a generative AI tool that allows users to create workflows based on a single text prompt. This means that users can simply type a natural language description of what they want the workflow to do, and Einstein for Flow will generate the code for the workflow.
For example, a user could type “I want to create a workflow that sends a notification to sales representatives when a lead is converted to an opportunity.” Einstein for Flow would then generate the code for a workflow that does exactly that.
Einstein for Flow is a powerful tool that can help users to automate their workflows and save time. It is also a great way for users who are not familiar with programming to create workflows.
Pricing
The pricing of Sales Cloud Einstein & Einstein for Service were announced a little while ago, and will be rolled into the existing Sales & Service Cloud Einstein Licenses, priced at $50/user per month. However, if you have Unlimited Edition licenses, Sales Cloud Einstein & Einstein for Service will be included.
This includes a limited number of Einstein GPT credits (number TBC), which go towards generating outputs from user prompts. Currently, it’s not confirmed what constitutes one credit. Other large language models (LLMs) work on the basis of tokens, which determine the scope of information that the model can analyze when generating outputs.
Salesforce is releasing Enterprise Expansion Packs to democratize pricing for generative AI. Currently, Salesforce has to absorb the cost of processing data when using their LLM (i.e. Einstein GPT), which can be expensive. To make pricing more fair, Salesforce is offering a pay-as-you-go option for customers who exceed their allotted credits.
Enterprise Expansion Packs for Sales and Service teams provide additional credits for querying large databases. This means that teams can use more generative AI without having to worry about exceeding their allotted credits.
Trailhead Badges
Earlier this year, Salesforce announced that it would be introducing 35 new AI-focused Trailhead badges. Some of these have been released, with others soon to follow.
Not all 35 badges have been released yet, but there are still plenty of badges to help you get started in learning everything about Einstein GPT. From AI and Generative AI fundamentals to quick look badges of every GPT product, there’s plenty to get your teeth into. Check out our guide to the top AI badges below.
Summary
It’s safe to say that Einstein GPT has some extraordinary expectations to live up to, but Salesforce have already demonstrated how this AI technology endeavors to be safe and secure without limiting its capabilities.
It’ll be exciting to see its use cases once we begin using it in full force.
Read more:
- Breaking News: Salesforce Announces AI Cloud for Einstein GPT
- Salesforce Announces Einstein GPT Integration with Flow + Data Cloud
- Available Now: Parts of Sales GPT, Service GPT, and Einstein Trust Layer
- Salesforce Reveals Einstein GPT Pricing
- A First Look at Salesforce Prompt Studio: Every Admin is a Prompt Engineer
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