Companies like Google and Microsoft have equipped their productivity suites with AI features and assistants, while startups such as ClickUp and ReadAI have focused heavily on building AI integrations and search capabilities. In alignment with this growing trend of infusing digital work suites with AI, Dropbox on Thursday upgraded its AI search tool, Dash, first introduced in 2023.
The company is adding AI “understanding” of different types of content in Dash, which means users can search across audio, video, and images in addition to text. The company is also adding people search to let users search for a person who worked on a specific project or look for a subject-matter expert.
Last year, Dropbox unveiled Dash for Business to let enterprises use AI search. This year, it’s improving Dash’s enterprise tooling by adding support for IT admins to exclude some sensitive documents from the search results.
Dropbox already has functions for summarizing documents using its AI. With this new release, the company is introducing new writing tools that leverage summaries from different data sources to create new documents and presentations. The company said these tools, which live in Dash, can collate information from email, meeting notes, and existing documents to create project plans, memos, or briefs. The core idea is that users won’t have to jump from one app to another to read some info and add it to a document.
What’s more, Dropbox is adding new integrations to Dash, including integrations for communication tools like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, along with project management and creative tools like Figma, Canva, and Jira. This will help users search for information across their projects on different platforms, according to Dropbox.
As AI vendors release new AI models, companies working in the productivity and workforce sectors are realizing that it’s getting easier to have AI look through a lot of information, summarize it, and also generate new content based on that. The challenge for these companies is building features quickly enough while integrating with other platforms to keep their customers happy.
Ivan covers global consumer tech developments at TechCrunch. He is based out of India and has previously worked at publications including Huffington Post and The Next Web. You can reach out to him at im[at]ivanmehta[dot]com
