Salesforce’s Einstein Copilot AI Will Soon Analyze Unstructured Data

Salesforce announced expanded capabilities of its generative AI assistant Einstein Copilot, enhanced integrations with Apple offerings and more today at the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event. The addition of the Data Cloud Vector Database to the Salesforce Data Cloud will allow both the Salesforce Data Cloud and Einstein Copilot to handle unstructured data.

Salesforce announced several other enhancements to its business software, particularly within Data Cloud for Advertisers. These products could be useful for a wide variety of teams, including IT, sales, customer service, marketing and commerce.

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A major enhancement to Salesforce Data Cloud is Data Cloud Vector Database, coming in a pilot program in February 2024. Data Cloud Vector Database is integrated vector database support that allows for the use of a wide variety of data types. Unstructured data — e.g., PDFs, email, audio and social media content — will be combined with structured data — e.g., purchase history, customer support cases and product inventory.

Einstein Copilot, Salesforce’s generative AI assistant, will be able to use unstructured data to respond to questions or perform analysis; it will access this data through Salesforce Data Cloud. Einstein Copilot will be generally available in February 2024.

“This transforms every piece of data — from emails to social media posts to audio — into actionable insights using AI, CRM, automation, AI, Einstein Copilot, and analytics,” said Rahul Auradkar, executive vice president and general manager of Unified Data Services and Einstein at Salesforce, in a press release.

Possible use cases of Einstein Copilot include:

Another enhancement for Salesforce Data Cloud will be Einstein Copilot Search, which will be in pilot in February 2024. Einstein Copilot Search draws from data across Data Cloud to provide smart suggestions for searches. It will be useful for problem-solving tasks performed by sales, customer service, marketing, commerce and IT teams. For example, Einstein Copilot search will be able to link a customer’s emails and phone calls to their formal support ticket history to assist a customer service representative.

Apple Messaging, Apple Pay and augmented reality will be accessible directly in certain Salesforce products. Salesforce and Apple have had a strategic partnership since 2018.

Specifically, Apple Messages for Business in Service Cloud, generally available today with Salesforce’s Service Cloud Digital Engagement, will let businesses set up live chat experiences with customers for customer service, product recommendations, tracking shipments or setting up appointments. Customers can pay for services and products with Apple Pay within the Messenger app.

Augmented reality with Apple’s ARKit will be available within the Salesforce Field Service mobile app in the summer of 2024. With it, field technicians can capture 3D renderings of real locations to make planning and installations easier.

The Salesforce Field Service iOS widget will be available for iPhones in the summer of 2024. It provides a quick view of key account information in Salesforce Field Service.

At Salesforce World Tour New York 2023, Salesforce’s AWS partnership was highlighted and other news was announced.

Salesforce reiterated the company’s partnership with AWS announced in November 2023, in which Salesforce expanded its use of AWS in multiple ways:

Salesforce opened a new jobs site for careers within the Salesforce ecosystem called Trailblazer Career Marketplace, which is open today to Salesforce partners.

Salesforce announced Unlimited Edition+, a package of Salesforce technologies for companies interested in getting into generative AI, data and CRM. UE+ is now in general availability.

New integrations are coming to Data Cloud for Advertisers. Data Cloud for Advertisers will be able to connect to Google Display & Video 360 for personalized ads across channels. Data Cloud for Advertisers will be able to connect to LinkedIn, letting advertisers target specific groups of professionals using Marketing Cloud, Sales Cloud and Service Cloud product usage data from their own apps and LinkedIn.

Note: TechRepublic is covering the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event virtually.

Salesforce Data Cloud updates aim to ease data analysis, AI app development

Salesforce adds Einstein Copilot Search, vector database to its Data Cloud, to help enterprises take advantage of unstructured data for analysis, and build AI-based applications.

Salesforce is updating its Data Cloud with vector database and Einstein Copilot Search capabilities in an effort to help enterprises use unstructured data for analysis.

The customer relationship management (CRM) software provider’s Data Cloud, which is a part of the company’s Einstein 1 platform, is targeted at helping enterprises consolidate and align customer data.

The Einstein 1 platform, in turn, is a data engine with a low code and no code interface that is designed to let  enterprises  connect data to build AI-based applications.

As part of the updates, Salesforce has integrated vector database support via the Data Cloud Vector Database feature, which makes it easier for the Data Cloud to handle diverse data types.

“This database allows Salesforce customers to combine structured and unstructured data, creating a more comprehensive customer profile,” the company said in a press release, adding that once the unstructured data is added to the Data Cloud, it is automatically converted into a usable format across the Einstein 1 platform.

This, according to the company, makes the unstructured data available for analysis and utilization across various workflows within Salesforce applications including  Flow, Apex, and Tableau.

Salesforce has also added an AI search capability to Einstein Copilot, which will allow the generative AI-based assistant to interpret and respond to complex queries from enterprise users by tapping into diverse data sources, including unstructured data.

“Copilot Search will provide precise, contextually relevant responses in a user’s workflow and bolster trust with source citations from the Einstein Trust Layer,” the company said.

The Einstein Trust Layer is based on a large language model (LLM) built into the platform to ensure data security and privacy.

In order to take advantage of unstructured data via Einstein Copilot Search, enterprises would have to create a new data pipeline that can be ingested by the Data Cloud and stored as unstructured data model objects.

These data model objects have to be transformed into data fit for use in AI applications by converting the data into embeddings, which are numeric representations of data optimized for use in AI algorithms, the company said, adding that these embeddings are then indexed for use in search across the Einstein 1 platform alongside any other existing structured data.

The Einstein Copilot Search capability can also be paired with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) tools — which Salesforce supplies — in order to enable Einstein Copilot to answer customer questions. Answers comes with semantically relevant information, citing the knowledge sources used to craft the answers, the company said.

With AI upgrade, Salesforce's Einstein Copilot will handle unstructured data

With the term "copilot" gaining popularity in the generative AI space, it may soon achieve the same ubiquity as terms like ChatGPT and AI chatbot. And now Salesforce is giving its own copilot a leg up in this competitive arena.

At the Salesforce World Tour New York 2023 event last week, Salesforce unveiled an upgrade for its Einstein Copilot, a conversational AI assistant to be integrated into all Salesforce applications. Einstein Copilot was first announced in September and is launching in February 2024. 

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With this upgrade, Einstein Copilot will be able to retrieve information from unstructured data, which refers to data not formatted as an organized data entry, including materials such as PDFs and emails. This feature should prove popular with Salesforce customers -- including sales, customer service, marketing, commerce, and IT professionals -- who can benefit from optimizing everyday business operations -- email, for example -- that are often not neatly organized into datasets.

Salesforce also unveiled Einstein Copilot Search, which will be found in Einstein Copilot and have "enhanced AI search capabilities" to answer complex prompts and provide smart suggestions by tapping into real-time unstructured and structured business data.

Einstein Copilot and Copilot Search will be capable of accessing unstructured data by leveraging Salesforce's Data Cloud Vector Database that unifies all business data, including unstructured data, such as transcripts and documents, and structured data, such as product inventory or purchase history. 

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Another benefit of the Data Cloud Vector is that it will circumvent the need to fine-tune large language models (LLMs), thereby saving businesses time and money and giving LLMs access to information that used to be unattainable due to training data limitations, according to Salesforce. 

"The Data Cloud Vector Database relieves the challenge of costly and complex processes to harness the value of unstructured data," said Rahul Auradkar, Salesforce EVP and GM of Data Cloud and Einstein. "Now, our customers can reason over the full spectrum of their enterprise data to power their business applications more effectively. "

Salesforce's Data Cloud Vector Database and Einstein Copilot Search will be in pilot in February 2024, while Einstein Copilot will be generally available at that date. 

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Although Salesforce's Copilot has not been released yet, Microsoft has many different Copilots for different enterprise needs that give users a good idea of how Salesforce's will function.