AI Bankers are Already a Reality
A recent report from financial conglomerate Citigroup predicted that the adoption of AI within the banking sector will increase the profits to nearly $2 trillion from $1.7 trillion by 2028. It also revealed that though AI adoption was rapidly increasing in the sector, it was limited mostly to optimising existing products and improving productivity. However, much like how ATMs automated the tedious clerical side of drawing money, AI is now handling the tedious customer-facing side of dealing with repeated FAQs on behalf of bank tellers. This is where California-based generative AI startup DeepBrain AI comes in. The company, founded by entrepreneur and engineer Eric Seyoung Jang in 2016, is the reason the biggest banks in South Korea, including KB Kookmin Bank, now have customer-facing AI avatars in their local branches. The startup began developing chatbots before pivoting towards creating AI-powered avatars. With its focus on generative text-to-video human avatars, DeepBrain has so far partnered with several companies, including NVIDIA, Lenovo, Microsoft and AWS. Why Even Use AI Bankers? Speaking to AIM, DeepBrain global marketing manager Jungwook (John) Son said that the company bagged contracts with the six biggest banks in South Korea, where they were initially founded, in implementing the use of “AI bankers” at offline branches. Clearly, there is a market for AI avatars if some of the biggest banks in the world decide to make use of them. But why? “They started off with having our AI avatars in a kiosk in their offline branch to act as the lobby leader. But, repeated questions that the actual bankers get are a big percentage of their daytime hours, which is not effective for their working biology,” he said. Because of this, the bank implemented AI bankers as a way to reduce the workload on actual human bankers. “KB Bank saw value in having the AI bankers and having the continuative service using the same avatar with the same tone and everything. It’s AI, so it never gets tired. It never gets angry. It’s just always there, smiling at you, giving you the information that you need without an issue,” said Son. But AI is Not Taking Over Jobs in the Banking Sector For most, the obvious concern is that this could take away jobs from bank tellers, effectively leaving many jobless. However, as Son mentioned, the avatars come in a time of need when they take over tedious tasks, freeing up time for bankers to engage with customers on other matters. Additionally, according to the Citi report, jobs have not been lost due to the adoption of technology but rather have increased – another example of Jevons Paradox. “Historical technology adoption has not led to a reduction of the finance workforce but has changed the workforce mix over time. New jobs are constantly created. For example, the US economy has 3x more compliance officers from 2000 to 2023,” the report said. Similarly, experts interviewed as part of the report have also stated that jobs are less likely to disappear because of AI adoption. However, “AI-led disruption of jobs and tasks are likely to change the nature of the workforce”. This is further backed by a report from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from earlier this year, which stated that as much as 26% of the Indian population is working in jobs that have a high rate of exposure to AI-caused disruptions. Banks in India have also been testing out AI proof of concepts, most notably to help in fraud detecting and prevention. What About the Future? For the company at least, they have had success in catering to several industries. The need for AI avatars is prevalent in areas like retail and broadcasting companies are always looking for AI anchors, which is a need DeepBrain has managed to fill. Meanwhile, they’ve also partnered with several companies, including football teams like Tottenham Hotspur and American chocolate chip cookie brand Chips Ahoy, to create AI ambassadors for their products. For Tottenham Hotspur, they made a miniature AI ambassador of captain Son Heung-min called Sonny. They were also the first startup to offer GenAI memorial services through their re;memory service, which relaunched only a couple of weeks ago. It was one of their first B2C services, where they offered families a chance for closure by creating AI avatars of loved ones. In the banking sector, however, they’re hoping to take it a step further. “They (KB Bank) decided to go on three phases. One, the kiosk that they had in the banks. Two, having the AI avatars in the mobile banking applications, because nowadays bank branches are shrinking and mobile application usage is increasing,” he said. Finally, they want to have face-to-face conversational services built into their apps, to allow customers a more personalised banking experience. “We’re looking into having connectivity with the data and everything and provide a personalised banking experience with the AI banker. So in the near future, when your app’s information and everything is linked and synced, you’ll have a personal banker on your phone,” Son said.
Much like how ATMs automated the tedious clerical side of drawing money, AI is now handling the customer-facing side of dealing with repeated FAQs on behalf of bank tellers.
Much like how ATMs automated the clerical side, AI is now handling the customer-facing side on behalf of bank tellers.
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["Go", "API", "GenAI", "AWS", "AI", "chatbots", "Aim", "generative AI", "GAN", "R"]
["AI", "generative AI", "GenAI", "Aim", "chatbots", "AWS", "R", "Go", "API", "GAN"]
Donna is a technology journalist at AIM, hoping to explore AI and its implications in local communities, as well as its intersections with the space, defence, education and civil sectors.