Dive Brief:
- IBM and Slack announced this week they will partner to bring IBM’s artificial intelligence-based Watson capabilities to Slack’s developers and enterprise users.
- Big Blue says the collaboration will allow developers to create more offerings on the communication platform, including bots.
- The companies will also offer tutorial resources to enable developers to learn to use Watson faster.
Dive Insight:
The companies say they will begin their collaboration by developing an updated Slackbot powered by Watson and a Watson-enabled bot for IT and network operations. The companies will also offer an Application Starter Kit to help developers get started building on the Slack platform.
Stewart Butterfield, CEO and co-founder of Slack, said combining Slack and Watson holds huge potential for advancing business.
"This partnership with IBM and the work we are doing with Watson will accelerate our customers' organizational intelligence and propel workplace productivity in dramatic new ways," Butterfield said in an announcement.
Given the big numbers associated with both Slack and Watson, the partnership could indeed prove powerful. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal’s WSJDLive 2016 technology conference Wednesday, IBM’s Chief Executive Virginia Rometty said Watson is on track to be used in some form by a billion people by the end of next year.
