Salesforce.com Inc. on Wednesday announced more detailed plans to infuse artificial intelligence deep into all its customer relationship management services.

Speaking at Salesforce’s annual Dreamforce conference, held for some 170,000 customers and partners in San Francisco, Chief Executive Marc Benioff provided a broad vision of Einstein, its new AI technology. Not a distinct product in itself, Einstein is now used in many of the company’s marketing, sales and customer support services, Benioff and other executives demonstrated at the main conference keynote presentation.

Melding technology from a half-dozen AI acquisitions in recent years, Einstein is essentially making Salesforce’s online customer and sales management services smarter, to hear it from the executives and several customers trotted out at the keynote. The names of products such as its Analytics Cloud and Marketing Cloud, in fact, now have “Einstein” tacked onto the end.

“We can see when we will have these built into every product,” Benioff said. Strolling through the throng at the keynote, he mentioned every AI company Salesforce has bought in quick succession. He also brought Salesforce cofounder and Chief Technology Officer Parker Harris onstage, making a cartoon Einstein character appear on the screen with the executive pair (pictured above, with Benioff at left and Harris at right).

“We’re on this march to artificial intelligence,” Benioff said. “That’s why we’re so excited about Einstein. It’s everybody’s data scientist.”

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff

One of the pioneers in cloud computing, the company has been casting about for ways to continue its growth. This year, it has bought more companies than it bought all of last year, including the $700 million acquisition of data management platform Krux Digital Inc. on Oct. 3. And it has spent some $4 billion in the past year on acquisitions in marketing and artificial intelligence. It also bid to buy LinkedIn, losing to Microsoft Corp.’s $26.2 billion bid.

It’s also said to be a frontrunner in bidding for Twitter, which could top $20 billion. Benioff had nothing to say about that elephant in the ballroom during his keynote. But in a later Q&A with investors, he appeared not to show much interest.

As Benioff’s company nears $10 billion in annual sales and seeks to fulfill Benioff’s promise to double that in coming years, Salesforce faces competition from more quarters — Oracle Corp., Adobe Systems Inc. and IBM Corp. in marketing and advertising, Amazon in cloud computing applications and Google Inc., Microsoft and Facebook Inc. in AI-driven services. Although its shares are up on the year, they fell as much as 8 percent in late August after its fiscal third-quarter revenue growth and fourth-quarter forecast came in lighter than expected.

Benioff and others suggested that Einstein is one key to keeping the company’s services ahead of the pack. Schneider Electric, a global energy management company for office buildings and other facilities, uses Salesforce’s Customer Success Platform, encompassing several cloud services such as sales and field service. The company said it’s creating smarter apps using Einstein-powered Salesforce services.

The fitness band maker Fitbit uses Einstein to help determine how best to reach customers, such as by email or phone. And the data from Fitbits can be used in health provider apps to provide personalized recommendations. Another Salesforce service enables live chats with health care providers such as a physical therapist, using data collected from Fitbits.

Salesforce, however, is starting well behind the leaders in artificial intelligence. Google Inc., Facebook Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others have been advancing AI for years now, not to mention snapping up a large amount of talent. Considerably smaller than those companies, Salesforce may find it tough to keep pace.

Indeed, some customers say Einstein is not very far along in most Salesforce products. Customers who met with Deutsche Bank this week, according to a note to the investment bank’s clients, said the consensus was that “the Einstein/AI offerings are intriguing but super early-stage, mostly marketing.”

Still, at least one partner said he’s looking forward to using Einstein. “This is groundbreaking new technology, so we’re thinking big about how, and how quickly, we can use it to provide value for our customers,” Shawn Belling, vice president of product development at CloudCraze, which helps businesses conduct commerce with each other on Salesforce, said in an email.

Photos by Robert Hof