Dreamforce 2023: All the day-three announcements

Not long to go now until the opening keynote here at the Moscone Center. 

A torrent of attendees flowing into the keynote theatre right now to the sound of some groovy acoustic beats. 

While we're waiting for the keynote to begin, why not check out some of our coverage of Dreamforce announcements so far? 

Salesforce has already unveiled a raft of new product announcements, including the launch of the Einstein Copilot assistant and an extension to its partnership with Google Workspace. 

You can find these here: 

• Salesforce and Google confirm Workspace integration in partnership extension

• Salesforce launches Einstein Copilot in sweeping update to AI assistant

Leah McGowen-Hare, SVP for the Trailblazer community, is up on stage first today with a few comments to kick things off at Dreamforce 2023. 

Salesforce "doesn't do basic", McGowan-Hare says. This year at Dreamforce the company is kicking things up a notch. 

"We are now the biggest AI event."

There are a lot of newcomers to Dreamforce this year. A significant portion of the crowd just stood up to show they're a newbie. A real statement on the popularity of the conference and how it's positioning itself as the leading AI event. 

A touching moment of remembrance for the people of Maui this morning ahead of the keynote session. 

Mike Hess is the first trailblazer up on stage this morning. A truly inspirational story. 

Mike lost his eyesight in his early 20s, but didn't let this hold him back. Mike founded the Blind Institute of Technology to help people with disabilities across the United States. 

A rapturous applause for Mike as he joins Leah on the stage here at Dreamforce. 

BIT works closely with Salesforce to support its members and to engage with employers across the US to help organizations tap into one of the most under-utilized workforce demographics in the country. 

Not long until Marc Benioff joins us. But before then we're getting some live music from Dave Matthews. Good vibes at Dreamforce this morning. 

Here we go. Marc Benioff has arrived. A rather subdued arrival, admittedly. For a moment nobody seemed to know where exactly he was. 

But he's on the stage now and we are ready to go today. 

"We have a fantastic Dreamforce put together for you. It's incredible who's showing up for you. We usually have visionaries and entertainers, but a new chapter has opened in AI this year."

Benioff isn't just bigging this up. The guest speaker list is a roster of some of the world's most impactful innovators and tech leaders. Sam Altman, arguably, the pick of the bunch. 

This is the most sustainable Dreamforce ever. More than 5,000 square feet of biodegradable signage, 10 million gallons of water conserved, and 100% compostable packaging. 

Salesforce is absolutely flying, Benioff says. The third-biggest software company in the world at present, except in Japan. In Japan it's the second-biggest. 

The company has had an exceptional year so far despite challenging macroeconomic conditions, exceeding expectations in recent earnings reports and growing revenue. 

This growth is impressive and has been underpinned by a sharp focus on the company's values. Salesforce has invested millions in supporting non-profits, public schools, and charities across the United States and abroad. 

Huge impact. 

"That makes Salesforce in an unprecedented position in San Francisco. We've given more than $100 million to hospitals and to public schools. We're very proud of that at Salesforce," he says. 

"We hope this inspires you not just to make a great product, but to improve the world, to use your technology and leadership to make the world a better place."

We're onto AI now. We're in the midst of a revolution, Benioff says. It's changing the way we work, it's changing industries, and it's changing Salesforce's future outlook and approach. 

Generative AI is a source of huge excitement across the global tech industry, but there are challenges. There are risks, and it's important to acknowledge this. 

"We have to start thinking about what we're doing with this technology," Benioff says. 

Salesforce is very conscious of how it's using generative AI, how this will benefit customers, but also how this might have a negative impact. 

Refreshing to hear this from Benioff. Many tech leaders have shrugged off the issue of trust and safety in recent months, but he's vocal on this. 

The AI trust gap is the number one priority for CEOs globally, Salesforce research shows. 

Similarly, 52% of consumers day they don't believe AI is safe and secure. 

Salesforce hopes to change perceptions here and foster greater trust among global businesses. Start with trust, and build from there. 

Hallucinations are an issue that Benioff and Salesforce hope to address and curtail. 

"Some people call them 'hallucinations', I call them lies," he says. 

Benioff officially unveils the Einstein 1 platform, announced today. 

"We want to build the trust AI platform for customer companies," Benioff says. "This is very exciting". 

Einstein aims to make everyone more productive, intelligent, and efficient. But fundamentally this platform is centered around trust. 

The Einstein 1 Platform is "our life's work", Benioff says. This represents the pinnacle of 25 years; worth of AI innovation and product design. All roads have led to this moment, it seems. 

That's a bold statement from Benioff. If Einstein represents the firm's "life's work" then we're at a very important juncture in the history of the firm. It's entering the future in a very strong position. 

Einstein 1 Platform is the "first predictive and generative AI for CRM", Benioff says. 

This represents a game changer both for the industry and for Salesforce, positioning it as the go-to AI CRM. 

Again, Benioff reiterates that this has been the result of more than a decade's worth of AI research and innovation. The current generative AI wave has come at the best possible time for the company. It's been innovating in the space for years. 

"We want to get to AI nirvana," he says. They're almost there...almost. 

This AI revolutionize needs to be democratized, Benioff says. An open ecosystem approach to AI innovation is key to ensuring that everyone can maximize their use of generative AI and capitalize on the benefits it can unlock. 

This isn't all talk, either. Salesforce has doubled down on its support for AI innovation across the industry through it's Salesforce Ventures fund. 

Earlier this year the firm unveiled a £250 million fund to support dynamic startups operating in the AI space. Two months later, Salesforce doubled the fund. 

Salesforce is putting its money where its mouth is, in this regard, Benioff says.

This isn't just an AI revolution, either. It's at trust revolution, he says. 

"The tenets of trusted, and ethical, and humane use" are critical, Benioff insists. 

A few years ago, Salesforce created a chief trust officer "way before anyone else" to address trust issues surrounding artificial intelligence, Benioff says. 

"We advance responsible AI globally, and transparency builds trust," Benioff says. 

"We all know what happens when AI can go very wrong. Let's keep it going in the right direction."

And with that, Benioff hands the stage over to Parker Harris, co-founder and chief technology officer at Salesforce.

Salesforce has specifically focused on the Einstein Trust Layer in a bid to build trust with customers and protect their data. 

The Einstein Trust Layer works by creating layers between LLMs and customer data and platforms. It's a dynamic approach to ensuring data security and keeping customers safe. 

We're onto the Einstein 1 Data Cloud announcement now from Harris. This is a hyperscale data engine inside Salesforce that connects customer data spanning multiple business functions. 

Sales, service, marketing, commerce. All of it is integrated. 

"All of your data lakes will integrate with our data cloud. We don't care if you're using AWS, Databricks, Snowflake. We're partnering with all of these companies," Harris says. 

We're getting a demo just now. Sanjna Parulekar from Einstein and Data Cloud product marketing is up next to give us a run through of how both platforms work. 

"It all starts with connecting your data. We've all been talking about low code today. But with no-code you can connect to any data within your organization," she says. 

This about "harmonizing" data, Parulekar says. 

The depth of integration here is quite remarkable. We're talking about an entire application and data estate being seamlessly integrated in a highly efficient manner. 

The productivity benefits alone for organizations are a source of huge excitement. 

We're back to Parker Harris now to round things off in his keynote speech. 

The AI revolution is also a customer revolution, Harris says. Now we have David Schmaier up next to discuss how generative AI is creating impactful changes among Salesforce customers. 

Another product announcement from Schmaier there with the Einstein Copilot assistant. 

"Einstein 1 just got better and stronger with Copilot," he says. 

Einstein Copilot marks a step change for sales and marketing practitioners, Schmaier says. The AI assistant will help alleviate pressure and strain on teams at organizations globally, unlocking productivity benefits and long-term efficiencies. 

Remember, you can read all about the latest Einstein Copilot announcements in our coverage here. 

The product and service announcements just keep flowing today. A raft of Einstein integrations across Salesforce's product suites as well as integration with partner organizations. Google Workplace the pick of the bunch. A big partnership extensions between the two firms. 

Salesforce weren't kidding when they said this was the "AI event of the year" - the sheer volume of AI-related product announcements has been astounding. Almost, one might argue, overwhelming. 

Sanjna Parulekar is back on stage to give us a short demo of the Einstein Copilot platform and how this has supported innovation at partner company, Williams-Sonoma. 

Einstein has the potential to drastically improve marketer productivity and create content, campaigns, and promotional materials in no time. 

In sales, it's equally as impactful. Automated meeting summaries, automatic transcription capabilities for calls. 

"We know that sales workers spend so much time on the phone, taking notes. Einstein helps with this," Parulekar says. 

Automated call transcription capabilities and meeting summaries are great, but this all feels like much of the same we've had from Google and Microsoft in recent months. 

Both Google and Microsoft's Copilot tools for Teams and Workspace offer the same - are we really seeing a generative AI "revolution", or are companies just rolling out the same capabilities in different packaging...?

Laura Alvarez, CEO of William Sonoma is speaking to Marc Benioff now for a profile of the company and its transformation in recent years. 

The e-commerce firm has deep ties with Salesforce, using its platform across its operations. 

"What's your dream for AI?" Benioff asks. 

"Let's talk about trust," Alvarez says. "When you think about brands, they're going to win with AI, but they have to add value to the customer's life. And the last thing you want to do is hurt the customer experience."

"I think we should stop referring to AI as 'artificial intelligence'," she says. "We should refer to this as data intelligence, or simply intelligence."

An interesting point here in terms of the perception of AI within the context of trust. 

Brands and consumers want authenticity as it creates a trustful relationship. 

We're now looking at the future of AI, according to Benioff. Patrick Stokes is going to give us a glimpse into the future. 

AI is rapidly changing the way we're building applications. It's simplifying processes and speeding things up for developers, resulting in massive productivity boosts for individual devs and teams at organizations globally. 

Salesforce wants to give customers a "new set of tools" to revolutionize application development. To do this, it's announcing Einstein 1 Copilot Studio. 

A key focus for Einstein Copilot Studio is the 'prompts' function, which uses natural language prompts to generate code and offer detailed insights for users building applications. 

"Everything always stars with a prompt," Stokes says. He's giving us a run through of how prompts work. 

We're moving onto the productivity revolution now with Slack CEO Lidiane Jones taking to the stage. 

Slack is getting some "game changing" generative AI features that will supercharge productivity for users. 

Slack's AI features are going to change the way users work and unlock a new era of efficiency for teams, Jones says. 

"With one click of a button Slack AI will catch up on everything I've missed," Jones says. Why attend meetings and huddles when Slack's AI can do it for you...?

Summarization capabilities will certainly help users contending with a seemingly never-ending cacophony of meetings where they're scrambling to take notes and identify action points. 

Once again though, Slack's AI features appear rather similar to those being rolled out by Microsoft and Google within their own productivity platforms. 

Skipping meetings and having your AI assistant keep you up to date will appeal to users.

And with that, we've come to the end of the opening keynote session at Dreamforce today. Some fantastic talks, a raft of product announcements, and a great buzz to the theatre here. 

Here's what we learned: 

• Salesforce is absolutely flying. Exceeding revenue expectations, continued growth despite challenging conditions. 

• The company is absolutely, unashamedly "all-in" on generative AI. This current wave of innovation builds on years of work in the AI space. The generative AI 'boom' has come at the perfect time for Salesforce. 

•  Benioff and Salesforce are very excited about Einstein's capabilities right now. The productivity and efficiency benefits touted by Salesforce today will be a game changer for partners and customers. 

• The generative AI revolution is also a "trust revolution" and "customer revolution", according to Harris and Benioff. Generative AI is exciting, but there are lingering concerns across the industry and broader society - it's up to industry leaders to calm fears and innovate responsibly. 

Let's not forget about Slack here, either. The collaboration platform is getting a major AI boost that will set it in good stead in the 'productivity' battle with Workspace and Teams in the coming months. 

At this stage though, it's just a case of choosing a platform with AI tools and rolling with it. You have to look really hard to differentiate between the features and capabilities being rolled out. 

Thanks for joining us at Dreamforce 2023 and we hope you enjoyed our live coverage. 

If you want to catch up on all the announcements so far, we've got you covered. 

• Salesforce launches Einstein Copilot in sweeping update for AI assistant

• Salesforce and Google confirm Workspace integration in partnership extension

Day two at Dreamforce and the crowds show no sign of calming down. Yet another busy day expected at the Moscone Center. 

Tonight will also see attendees make their way to the Chase Center to see Foo Fighters at Dreamfest. 

We are just about to start the first session of the day at Dreamforce 2023. First up we have a panel session exploring the future of AI in the workplace. 

Juan Perez, CIO at Salesforce says tools such as Einstein Copilot represent a great opportunity to "seriously improve productivity". 

Salesforce unveiled Einstein Copilot yesterday and appears very confident that its GPT platform can transform efficiency. 

Slack CEO Lidiane Jones says that new AI features integrated within the collaboration platform are very much focused on alleviating pressure on users, enhance productivity, and boost efficiency. 

There appears to be a deep level of collaboration between Perez and Jones in terms of maximizing the use of Slack both internally for Salesforce staff, but also for customers. 

"We believe that in the future we'll be able to use the features that Lidiane is developing to address customer needs and within the organization," Perez says. 

We're onto the AI skills gap now. There's a lot of research showing that the pace of AI innovation is causing somewhat of a bottleneck in terms of relevant skills. Organizations are adopting at pace, but their workforces just don't have the skill sets required to maximize the use of these tools. 

Lidiane Jones says she's "really optimistic" about the use of AI tools in the workplace. 

While there are repeated warnings over the risks of generative AI tools and the potential for job losses, AI can seriously reduce strain on staff. 

"We can be better marketers, better writers, better sellers. I believe that, if done well, AI can transform us to be our better selves."

"If we do it well, and responsibly, and do it with trust in mind, it can be quite transformative. We want to be a platform that unlocks responsible productivity in which human creativity can come back to the workplace," Jones says. 

Salesforce is leveraging AI within HR functions and recruitment to assist staff in examining and assessing job applicants. This is saving a lot of time of administrative-related work.

Juan Perez touches on the use of AI tools in software development and testing. 

"I see AI as an incredible enabler in the future for improving software quality," he says. "Looking for ways to improve software quality is fascinating for us. 

"Not that it's going to replace developers, it's going to support developers."

This isn't about replacing developers, but "ultimately build better technology to make the world better", Perez says. 

Both Perez and Jones have underlined the necessity of ethical AI deployment. Both organizations are focusing heavily on the potential impact of AI on the workforce alongside the benefits and improvements it may deliver. 

"We have a really high bar for ethics," Jones says. Salesforce is bullish on AI, but it's conscious of harms, risks, and ethical considerations. 

We're rounding things off now with a short discussion on the 'P word', productivity. 

"I have a belief that every business has opportunities for productivity improvements. It's the right thing to do, productivity leads to many good things," Perez says. 

"Businesses are all looking for ways to use technology to improve productivity," he adds. "Now comes AI. We still haven't seen the full story written, but all these organizations are seeing AI as another enabler of productivity improvements that will free up investment opportunities."

AI could unleash a "different part of our brains" in terms of creativity and critical thinking, says Natalie. "We are trying to understand the productivity gains at Salesforce. Really understanding the value and definition of productivity."

"The employee experience increases if you feel productive."

Jones says that "when an employee feels productive, it feels really good".

"For far too long we've had long days of meeting after meeting, and feeling like now we have to work. We're on a mission to empower users to be in charge of reshaping their own productivity," she says. 

"This is not only about changing the manual to automated, AI unlocks a brand new way to work," Jones adds. 

"We're really excited to make productivity fun again."

An excellent panel discussion here with some great insights. Certainly an optimistic outlook on the future of AI in the workplace from all involved. 

There's been a tendency to focus on the negatives over the last year. Workforce upheaval, job losses, and more. But with businesses accelerating the adoption of AI tools, the narrative is changing. 

It's less about how employees can work "for AI", and transitioning to how "AI can work for them", Jones says. 

We're now onto the press questions. Jones tells ITPro that the narrative is shifting from "fear to learning" on artificial intelligence. 

Much of the media narrative has, as previously mentioned, focused on the negative aspects. But there's a great opportunity to open up new ways of working for tech professionals globally and deliver marked improvements to productivity. 

That's all from the AI and future of work panel discussion. We'll back back shortly to give you updates from the upcoming keynote exploring marketing in the age of generative AI. 

It's almost time for the Marketing in AI keynote. This session will include input from a host of speakers, including Steve Hammond, EVP and GM for marketing cloud at Salesforce. 

In the meantime, why not catch up on some of our latest coverage from Dreamforce 2023? 

In his keynote speech yesterday, CEO Marc Benioff said the generative AI industry needs a "trust revolution".

Benioff also sat down for a 'fireside chat' with OpenAI chief exec Sam Altman. The discussion gave attendees a fascinating insight into Altman's future plans for the tech firm. 

Altman also made some...eyebrow-raising comments on AI 'hallucinations'. 

They keynote theatre is starting to fill up rapidly ahead of the session here at the Moscone Center. A great buzz still prevalent among the crowds at Dreamforce.  

Steve Hammond, EVP and GM for marketing cloud at Salesforce is the first speaker of the session this afternoon. An animated entrance from Hammond, who begins the talk by praising the continued energy among the crowd. 

"We've all been growing through a lot of change over the last year," Hammond says. 

"In that time, we've seen incredible momentum happening in the marketplace, and a lot of this has been driven by artificial intelligence."

Hammond starts by highlighting the rise of a 'prompt engineer'. This is a new role in the tech industry, more or less. The growth in this area is being driven by the rise of generative AI technologies. 

"We all need to learn how to be a prompt engineer," he adds. Looks like I'm switching career...

AI in marketing isn’t new, Hammond says. Marketers have been using AI tools in some capacity for years now. But recent advances in generative AI mean that practitioners can maximize productivity and generate content “on the fly”. 

“AI is helping us to amplify and create proficiencies in our products, and in our marketing,” he says. 

Using data is critical for marketers in the modern landscape, Hammond says. It’s a fuel for businesses today. 

“It fuels your understanding of marketing intelligence in your campaigns. It also fuels your ability to create loyalty programs for your customer.”

AI has an active role here, he adds. It allows teams to scale how they reach out to customers and maximize the impact of their campaigns. 

For context here, we've done some digging on generative AI in marketing and the results are very promising for practitioners. 

Research from HubSpot this year found that 90% of marketers who use AI say it's rapidly improving content creation and bolstering productivity in their daily roles. 

More than two-thirds (67%) of marketers who use AI say it helps them create content faster, which is reducing the burden placed on them each day. 

But AI is only as good as your data. This is absolutely critical, Hammond emphasizes. 

“If we don’t have a good means of training the models, we’re not going to get good results out of it,” he says. A tradesperson is only as good as their tools, so to speak. 

He’s using doughnuts as a comparison here…bear with us.

The team tried out a prompt on Einstein GPT asking it to generate content on a talk on doughnuts, he said. 

It got “very punny” and wasn’t exactly the best bit of content. But this lacked context, he notes. Providing additional context and details for the AI assistant gives it “signals” to get a “realistic and good response back”. 

This has been a great session so far. The potential of generative AI in marketing is truly transformative. It's a term that gets thrown around frequently, but the numbers back it up and there's certainly an appetite among marketers to capitalize on the generative AI 'boom'

We're about to rush our way to another session now, a press panel on the future of AI at Salesforce. We're expecting a special guest to make an appearance...two guesses on who it is. 

There's a crowd gathering outside the press room by the looks of things, which I suspect is largely due to the 'special guest'. At this stage, it's rather obvious who we're talking about...

And we're off. One seat left vacant. Clara Shih kicks things off, pointing to the extremely exciting time in which Salesforce is currently operating. A dynamic period in the company's history, and the broader technology industry. 

What's Salesforce's long-term strategy with artificial intelligence? 

Trust, Shih says. It's essentially that organizations have guardrails in place to protect customers and enable innovation. 

"How do you approach generative AI in a safe and responsible manner? That's why we launched the Einstein Trust Layer. It starts with trust," she says. 

Organizational readiness is a growing focus for Salesforce and partners during the generative AI 'boom'. 

The same change management mindset in traditional transformation is being applied in the context of generative AI. Start with trust, implement guardrails to ensure safety, and innovate from there on. 

Kathy Baxter says that ethics and responsible use is a key focus also, at present. 

Customers need to feel confident that AI models are going to be accurate. Hallucinations are a big concern in a business context. 

"It's got to be accurate. We are really laser focused on that. And it's got to be safe - that's really at the core of everything."

We're now moving onto the Salesforce Ventures AI fund. This launched earlier this year with a $250 million commitment to investing in AI startups and enterprises. Two months later, they doubled it. A serious signal of intent. 

"We really ran through the first $250 million dollars quickly. So we decided to double down on it," he says. 

The expansion of this investment scheme really underlines Salesforce's optimistic and animated approach to generative AI in recent months. They're making huge financial commitments and backing partners. 

We're really moving through the topics here in this panel session, having moved onto policy and regulation. 

"I'm very encouraged to see so many countries" exploring regulatory approaches to artificial intelligence, says Eric Loeb. 

Regulations are only part of the equation here. Voluntary commitments, such as NIST, represent a dynamic approach to creating standards for generative AI globally. 

But there are concerns here about a lack of global alignment on the issue. The European Union and United States appear to have differing views on regulation - with the former adopting a far more rigid approach. 

Meanwhile, the United Kingdom sits somewhere in between. There's a lot of work to be done to reach a global consensus here. 

"Having a standard that can be used globally is that first great step, regardless of what the regulation is about," Kathy Baxter tells attendees. 

The Salesforce Ventures AI fund has 27 investments in countries around the world, says John. This isn't just a US-centric fund, he adds. There's a broad scope here and the fund is examining options in a host of countries, such as the United Kingdom. 

Salesforce doesn't appear too concerned about the EU AI Act, which has been a contentious subject in recent months. 

Given Salesforce's position in the market and its extensive customer base, this seems like a promising hint that it might not be as cataclysmic as some in the tech industry have suggested. 

Consumers over the last ten years have been thoroughly battered with misinformation, disinformation, and polarization on the topic of AI, says Shih. 

Perceptions of AI technology have become rather warped by hyperbole and scaremongering. This is why Salesforce's approach to AI is so impactful, she adds. 

The company has adopted a trust-based, responsible approach to AI innovation, and its paying dividends now in the generative AI era. 

And the special guest is here...it's Marc Benioff. 

"We're at the beginning of artificial intelligence," he says. "We're through that nascent stage."

It's certainly an exciting time in the AI space, he says. 

ChatGPT and Bard are "like toddlers right now, but they're going to grow up really fast", Benioff says. The pace of development in the AI space is remarkable and shows no sign of stopping. 

On the topic of hallucinations, Benioff says that larger models are more prone to hallucinations. Smaller models, not so much. This may prompt a heightened focus on small models, he suggests. 

We're talking about San Francisco and speculation about Dreamforce leaving. This has been a contentious subject in recent weeks, Benioff suggested they may pull the conference out of the city. 

There are a lot of issues at play in San Francisco currently, he says. That's not to put the city down, but there's a lot that can be done to improve safety and the city. 

He adds that San Francisco is the "number one AI city in the world". That's a "huge accelerator" that the city needs to ride. 

"No one is ready for AI," Benioff says in response to a question about AI readiness in emerging economies. 

There are great opportunities in Africa, for example, with regards to AI. But this is a global opportunity here, there is no limit. The technology is transformative. 

"A lot of entrepreneurs are going to be created right now," Benioff says. 

Thousands of companies have been created since the beginning of the generative AI wave last year. Venture capital is flowing into the space, there are a lot of rising stars in the industry, such as Hugging Face.

Benioff rounds off the panel session with a response to questions over his succession plan. He resumed his role as sole CEO earlier this year. 

A rather tight-lipped response. 

That's the end of the panel session. An excellent session here with a broad range of topics covered, as well as a completely not obvious 'surprise' guest visit from Benioff. 

And with that, we've reached the end of our day-two live blog. We hope you've enjoyed our rolling coverage of the sessions at Dreamforce today. 

Here's a snapshot of our coverage (so far) from the conference, but stay tuned for more:

• Dreamforce 2023: Benioff says generative AI needs a ‘trust revolution’ 

• Salesforce launches Einstein Copilot in sweeping update to AI assistant

• Sam Altman says hallucinations are part of the “magic” of generative AI

• Salesforce and Google confirm Workspace integration in partnership extension

Not quite the intensity and buzz of yesterday, but the keynote theatre is still filling up rapidly ahead of this morning's first session. 

Clara Shih, CEO of Salesforce AI is the first speaker up this morning. 

"What an amazing time to be alive" during the era of AI, she says. 

"There's no question, we are in an AI and data revolution, which means we're in a customer revolution and a business revolution," she says. 

"It's not so simple as just taking your data and training it. There are safety considerations, there are new concerns we have to work out together."

There are opportunities for businesses globally in the  "era of AI", Shih says. But running parallel to this are new challenges akin to those encountered during the early days of the world wide web. 

Ethics and trust will be key to ensuring responsible development of AI moving forward.  

Shih appears very excited about the new Salesforce Einstein Copilot assistant. A common theme across the event this week - Salesforce is very bullish on the potential for this tool to support customers and enhance productivity. 

Einstein's no-code and low-code capabilities have been frequently highlighted at Dreamforce this week. Great potential here to 'democratize' AI development, Shih says. 

Another demo of the Einstein prompt builder in this opening session. Salesforce very keen on emphasizing how impactful this tool is. Yesterday's AI in marketing keynote delved into this area. 

"We all need to become prompt engineers," we heard yesterday. 

Muralidhar Krishnaprasad, EVP of software engineering is up next to give us a run through of Salesforce's data cloud. 

"We've seen tremendous success. This is the fastest organic growing product in Salesforce history," Krishnaprasad says. 

Data Cloud is deeply integrated with major partners. Snowflake, AWS, and more, Krishnaprasad says. A very convenient and streamlined product here that is removing a lot of leg work for organizations.

We're getting a comprehensive demo here from Krishnaprasad on using the Einstein prompt builder to generate more personalized customer outreach emails. 

Very intuitive and extremely efficient. Serious time savings for users if utilized effectively. 

Joe Inzerillo, EVP and chief product & technology officer as SiriusXM Radio is up on stage now discussing how the station is using AI tools to streamline operations. 

"I'm glad we're past the period of 'the computers are going to kill us' stage," he says. 

"Now we're down to the brass tacks of how these tools can help us."

"The great radio hosts our there make listeners feel that they're talking directly to them," he says. "AI is helping us do that."

SiruisXM is harnessing AI tools to personalize listener outreach and "transform the business". 

Claire Cheng, senior director for engineering at Salesforce is our next speaker, beginning with a call to action on the 'trust' front. 

Building a trust-based foundation in AI innovation will stand businesses in good stead in the months and years to come. Customers want to be comfortable knowing their data is protected and used responsibly, she says. 

The Einstein Trust Layer is what Salesforce is pinning much of its 'trust' focus on at present, it's been highlighted repeatedly at Dreamforce. The company seems very keen to position itself as the go-to 'safe' option for customers. 

"We're at the world's largest AI event, but did you know you're also at the world's most fashionable AI event?" Shih asks attendees. 

Gilberto Tosca, chief technology and information officer at Gucci is our next speaker to give us an insight on how the high-end fashion brand is leveraging AI tools across its business operations. 

The brand has been an early adopter of AI tools in the fashion industry, Tosca says. 

AI tools are helping 'Guccify' its messaging to customers, he adds. 

"Gucci is one hundred years old. We have in our DNA creativity, but also a lot of passion for technology. It's not a mystery that we started working on AI a few years back to leverage machine learning to customize customer experience. 

Salesforce's ServiceGPT is enabling marketing practitioners at Salesforce to markedly improve its customer communications and outreach capabilities. 

Keeping AI "human-centric" is a key focus for Gucci, Tosca says. 

"Our customers trust us when they give their personal data to Gucci," he adds. This, Tosca says, influences its approach to AI development. It's pursuing an ethical and trust-based approach to AI development. 

Alexa Vignone, EVP for sales, is up next here at Dreamforce. Alexa will be delving into how Salesforce hopes to achieve its goals of becoming the go-to AI CRM. 

"We're going to deliver capabilities like summarization, and have deeper, more contextual conversations with your customers," Vignone says. 

The fundamental focus is making things "more easy" for customers by leveraging its copilot tools. 

"It's not just about the products and services we're building," Vignone says. "It's about how we're using our ecosystem to build on these."

Handing things over to Shih, Vignone says that we've got one more exciting announcement to come...

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian has joined Shih on the stage to discuss the latest expansion of its partnership with Salesforce. 

The companies confirmed the partnership extension earlier this week ahead of Dreamforce. This will see closer integration of Salesforce services and Google Workspace. 

Kurian says Google Cloud shares a lot of values with Salesforce with regards to AI development. Specifically in the 'trust' focus. 

The partnership extension and Workspace integration has trust at its core, he says. 

"We have a long-standing partnership," Shih says. Salesforce has been leveraging Vertex AI and has integrated BigQuery in recent years, she says. Now they're targeting the use of generative AI capabilities with Duet integration. 

And with that, the keynote session at Dreamforce this morning is coming to a close. 

Shih signs things off with an optimistic outlook. 

"We are with AI where we were in 1999 with the cloud," she says. "This is an exciting, inspiring time."

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