Introducing AI in Automations

[thomaswang]

Hi all! I’m Thomas, an engineer working on Airtable AI. We are excited to share that AI in Automations is available for everyone participating in the AI beta, along with the ability to generate automatically with GPT-4, in larger bases, and larger context windows!

AI in Automations

Since the release of the AI field, we’ve received lots of positive feedback on its ease of use and the transformative impact it has had on your workflows. We've also taken note of your requests to integrate AI into Automations, thereby enabling more complex and versatile applications.

We’re happy to introduce a new Automation action type, "Generate with AI assist." This feature allows you to add an action that makes a call to a large language model, and to customize its prompt by referencing a variety of sources such as columns of the triggering record, the current date, relevant records from another table, and more. You can then use the AI’s output in any way you want: sending it out via Slack or email, saving it to a column in the base, creating a new Google Doc, or chaining it together with other automation actions, including other AI actions.

In the above demo, we can easily configure the AI prompt to include a list of customer feedback matching certain criteria from a view, then let the AI provide a concise summary to post in the Slack channel.

You can imagine how to combine the versatility of Automations and the power of AI to build the workflows that can make your organization more productive. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

1. Post to Slack when negative customer feedback is submitted
2. Summarize team updates and send an email every Monday morning
3. Automatically create a draft proposal in a Google doc when a new intake form is submitted

For more information about AI in Automations, check out our help center.

 

Other enhancements

• Generate automatically: You can now set the “Generate automatically” setting in AI fields that use GPT-4 and in tables with more than 300 rows! 
• Larger context window: Queries that use GPT-3.5 now support up to 16K tokens, or about 12,000 words. This will enable you to do queries on longer inputs, such as call transcripts.

We’re working to improve our existing AI features and develop new ones to help you leverage the power of generative AI.

If you’re on a paid plan and would like to join the AI Beta, log into Airtable and choose “Message support” from the Help menu. Submit a feature request with the description “Airtable AI Beta access” in the subject line.

We welcome your thoughts and questions, so please don't hesitate to reach out to us!

[Tristan-ARG]

Looking Nice, 

However I cannot try it, when it will be open to the peasants? I have sent the request many times and didnt get access. would like to check it and use it.🤗 (I have a team account)

[DAN_SMITH2]

Same here! We are on the business plan.... I put a request in to join the beta testing and no response??

[thomaswang]

@Tristan-ARG @DAN_SMITH2 Hey sorry about the wait! We are actively processing the AI beta waitlist, if you've been a paid customer for more than 2 months, please reach out to support to prioritize.

[Antony_Rappai]

HI, this is great. I suppose there will soon be an interface to use natural language to build your whole automation. Like say, please build an automation to trigger an email alert when a new row is added to the table

[Ruchika_Abbi1]

Some feedback on the AI Assist field. Adding here as can't find any other place to give feedback. 

1. There should be a way to specify which fields are required for the AI Assist prompt and which aren't. Currently all fields get considered required. However in a use case, I may want a field to be considered only if it has a value set. 

2. If I create the AI assist field to be generated manually, I cannot use it in an Interface as it doesn't show the Generate button on the interface. I'll need to add a button to trigger it through automation which makes it unnecessarily complicated. 

3. There should be a way to edit the content generated by the AI assist field.

[Casey_Kleiman]

Put in a request on a business plan and have received crickets, lets add some more people to the beta!

[Jason_Jakarta]

I'm a big Airtable user and advocate with lots of my clients using Airtable but, despite requesting and asking, I still haven't heard anything. Any chance of getting access to this so I can learn and promote with my client base ? 

[Jeamyannock]

Super cool news about Airtable AI! Can't help but think about the possibilities of AI tools for sales – this could seriously streamline processes and boost efficiency.