What is Generative AI in Salesforce? A practical 2025 guide

Let’s be honest, there’s a lot of buzz around Generative AI right now. It feels like every tool we use is getting an AI upgrade, and Salesforce is right in the middle of it, rolling out features that promise to completely change how teams work.

But what does "Generative AI in Salesforce" actually mean? Is it one new button to click? A whole new platform to learn? And most importantly, is it the right move for your business? It’s easy to get lost in all the marketing speak.

We’re here to cut through the noise. This guide will break down what Salesforce’s Generative AI is all about. We’ll cover how it works, what people are using it for, and, crucially, the limitations and alternatives you should think about before going all in.

Generative vs. predictive AI

First things first, let’s clear up a couple of terms. When you hear "AI" in the context of Salesforce, it usually means one of two things: predictive or generative.

Generative AI is the one getting all the headlines lately. Think of it as a creative assistant. It’s the type of artificial intelligence that creates new, original content, like text, code, or images, based on the massive amounts of data it’s been trained on. When you ask ChatGPT to write an email for you, that’s generative AI in action.

Predictive AI, on the other hand, has been part of Salesforce for a while now. It’s all about looking at past data to predict future outcomes. For example, it can analyze your sales history to forecast which leads are most likely to close or which customers might be at risk of churning. It’s built to answer the question, "What’s likely to happen next?"

Both types are useful, for sure. But generative AI is what’s powering all the newest features from Salesforce. It’s focused on handling content-heavy tasks to make your team’s day-to-day work a little bit easier.

The Einstein ecosystem

So, what are we talking about when we say Generative AI in Salesforce? It’s not a single product you buy off the shelf. Instead, it’s a whole suite of tools built into the Einstein 1 Platform. The goal is to sprinkle these AI capabilities across everything you already do in Salesforce.

Here are the core components you’ll run into:

• Einstein Copilot: This is the friendly face of Salesforce AI. It’s a conversational assistant that lives inside your Salesforce apps. Your team can ask it questions in plain language ("Summarize this account’s recent activity") or tell it to perform tasks ("Draft a follow-up email to this contact"). It’s designed to be a sidekick for your sales and service agents.

• Prompt Builder: This is an admin tool that lets you create and manage reusable prompts for the AI. The key here is that you can "ground" these prompts in your specific CRM data. This means when Einstein Copilot generates an email, it’s not just generic, it pulls in the contact’s name, their recent purchase history, and other relevant details directly from Salesforce, so the output is actually useful.

• Model Builder: Salesforce knows that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to AI models. The Model Builder gives you the flexibility to use different large language models (LLMs). You can use models from providers like OpenAI or Anthropic, or even bring your own custom-trained model to the platform.

• Einstein Trust Layer: This is Salesforce’s answer to the big security and privacy questions around AI. It acts as a secure middleman between your company’s data and the LLM. Before a prompt is sent to the AI model, the Trust Layer automatically masks any sensitive customer data (like names or credit card numbers). It also makes sure the LLM doesn’t store any of your company’s data, so your information isn’t used to train the general model.

Common use cases

Now for the fun part: how can you actually use this stuff? Salesforce has embedded generative AI across its clouds to help different teams get more done.

For sales teams

Sales reps can spend less time on admin and more time building relationships.

• Sales Emails: Instead of writing every email from scratch, reps can have Einstein automatically draft personalized outreach and follow-up emails grounded in CRM data.

• Call Summaries: After a long sales call, Einstein can generate a concise summary, highlighting key discussion points, customer feedback, and next steps, which saves a ton of time on data entry.

• Account Research: Before a big meeting, reps can ask Einstein to research a prospect’s company and generate a brief on their strategic initiatives, recent news, and competitive landscape.

A Salesforce AI agent engaging a new lead, showcasing a practical use case of Generative AI in Salesforce for sales teams.

For service teams

Support agents can resolve customer issues faster and with more consistency.

• Service Replies: In a live chat or email conversation, Einstein can draft contextual responses for agents based on the customer’s case history and your internal knowledge base.

• Work Summaries: When a support case is closed, Einstein can automatically generate a summary of the problem and the resolution, which helps with documentation and future troubleshooting.

• Knowledge Article Generation: Einstein can identify successful resolutions in support tickets and automatically create draft articles for your knowledge base, helping you fill content gaps with proven solutions.

Einstein AI summarizing a customer service case, demonstrating how Generative AI in Salesforce streamlines support workflows.

For marketing and commerce teams

Marketers can create more targeted campaigns and personalized experiences without the manual effort.

• Personalized Content: AI can generate tailored copy for email campaigns, landing pages, and even product descriptions for your e-commerce site.

• Segment Creation: Instead of manually building complex audience filters, marketers can describe their target audience in natural language (e.g., "Show me all customers who bought a specific product in the last 90 days but haven’t opened an email"), and Einstein will build the segment in Data Cloud.

Limitations to consider

While the vision for Einstein sounds great, getting it up and running isn’t always a walk in the park. The built-in Salesforce AI has a few hurdles that can make it a slow, expensive, and complicated project for a lot of companies.

Complex setup and long time-to-value

Let’s be clear: setting up the full Einstein 1 Platform is a big undertaking. It’s not a feature you can just toggle on. You need deep Salesforce expertise, a lot of configuration, and usually a multi-month plan with a team of specialists. For many businesses, that means the productivity boosts you’re hoping for are stuck behind a long and expensive setup.

Sometimes, a simpler approach just makes more sense. Tools like eesel AI are built to be completely self-serve. You can connect your helpdesk and other apps with a few clicks and have a working AI agent ready to go in minutes, not months. No need to sit through mandatory demos or long sales calls to get started.

Limited data ecosystem

Salesforce AI is great at using data that’s already inside Salesforce. But what about everything else? Most companies have important information spread across a dozen other tools, internal wikis in Confluence, project plans in Notion, technical guides in Google Docs, and everyday chats in Slack. Teaching the Salesforce AI to use that external knowledge is a massive headache. You’d often have to migrate all of that information into the Salesforce Data Cloud first, which is a project in itself.

This graphic illustrates a key limitation of what is Generative AI in Salesforce: its closed ecosystem versus more flexible, integrated alternatives.

What you really want is an AI that connects to your knowledge wherever it happens to be. eesel AI does just that, connecting to over 100 sources right out of the box. It can learn from your past support tickets, your help center, and all your internal docs at the same time. This means your AI gets the full picture and can give complete, accurate answers without you having to launch a huge data migration project.

Rigid workflows and customization challenges

Salesforce’s Prompt Builder gives you some room to customize, but it can feel a bit rigid if you’re not a developer. If you want to build custom AI actions, like having the AI check a live order status in Shopify or update a ticket in a very specific way, you’ll probably need to call in a developer.

A workflow diagram highlights the limitations of Generative AI in Salesforce when external data is needed for automation.

This is where having more control really matters. eesel AI gives you a fully customizable workflow engine that anyone on your team can use. With a simple prompt editor, you can dial in the AI’s exact personality, tone, and the specific jobs it’s allowed to do. You can set up custom API calls to pull real-time info or kick off workflows in other tools. Best of all, you can run simulations on thousands of your past tickets to see exactly how the AI would have responded, taking the guesswork out of the whole process before you flip the switch.

Einstein AI pricing explained

Figuring out Salesforce’s AI pricing can be a bit of a maze. It’s usually not a single product but an add-on you get with the more expensive Salesforce plans. For example, the "Einstein Generative AI for Service" add-on can cost around $60 per user per month. Salesforce also frequently uses a credits-based system, where different AI actions consume a certain number of credits. This can make your monthly bill a surprise, especially when your team is busy.

If you prefer something more predictable, eesel AI’s pricing is straightforward. The plans are based on how many AI interactions you need, with no weird per-resolution fees.

eesel AI Plan	Monthly Price (Billed Annually)	AI Interactions/mo	Key Features
Team	$239	Up to 1,000	Train on docs/websites, AI Copilot, Slack integration.
Business	$639	Up to 3,000	Everything in Team + Train on past tickets, Custom AI Actions, API calls, Simulation Mode.
Custom	Contact Sales	Unlimited	Advanced security, custom integrations, multi-agent orchestration.

With eesel AI, all core products like the AI Agent, Copilot, and Triage are included in one plan. Your bill is predictable, so you’re never penalized for having a successful, high-volume month.

The right way to bring Generative AI into your workflow

There’s no doubt that Generative AI in Salesforce can help your sales, service, and marketing teams get more done. Being able to automate email drafts, summarize long conversations, and create personalized content is incredibly useful.

But the native Einstein 1 Platform comes with its own set of challenges: a complicated setup, vendor lock-in, and costs that can be hard to predict. These can be real roadblocks for a lot of businesses. The good news is you don’t have to choose between powerful AI and a tool that’s simple, flexible, and fast to set up.

eesel AI offers a different path for bringing generative AI into your workflow. It works right alongside Salesforce and your other tools, gets going in minutes, and puts you in the driver’s seat of your automation. You get all the power of great AI without the enterprise-level headaches.