The Commonwealth Bank will test a generative AI-based chatbot that could replace its call centre staff as part of Australia’s largest financial institution’s expanded use of AI technology.

On Tuesday, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) announced it would become the first Australian company to use Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) P5s, which are based on Nvidia computer chips supporting AI processing, and Amazon SageMaker, a machine-learning managed service.

This will see CBA “activate” its AI Factory, with its staff to test and develop AI-based solutions, particularly in its customer service branch of the business.

As part of this, there will be new trials of the Hey CommBank chatbot, a ChatGPT-like generative AI tool that can answer customer questions in a conversational style based on data held by the bank.

This new generative AI chat tool will first be used by CBA employees who are also customers of the bank, as the Australian Financial Review reported.

“With this new computer capability, we are unlocking CommBank to deliver more personalised experiences for all our customers, reducing our time to deliver across all our channels and operations, while supporting the responsible growth of genAI across the bank,” CBA chief data and analytics officer Dr Andrew McMullan said in a statement.

CBA employs more than 2,400 people in its call centres around the country, who provide assistance to customers over the phone and instant messages.

This team fields about 50,000 contacts from customers every day.

Concerns over potential job losses

The announcement of the new AI trial has raised the concerns of the Finance Sector Union, which said it was not consulted before the launch.

Finance Sector Union assistant secretary Nicole McPherson said the rollout of the new technology was “disrespectful and tricky”.

“Once again, AI is being introduced into the workplace without any consultation with workers or customers,” McPherson told the AFR.

In August last year, CBA announced that more than 800 roles would be made redundant, with 571 workers redeployed and 251 retrenched from roles including software engineer and data architect.

This led to concerns from the union that the bank’s remaining IT staff will be left to pick up the slack.

This new customer-facing AI chatbot is in addition to the bank’s ChatIT, which uses AI to handle internal IT issues.

A ‘significant milestone’

The chatbot trial is part of CBA’s wider rollout of artificial intelligence technologies through its partnership with AWS.

Through access to the AWS AI Factory, the bank will look to provide “hyper-personalised and contextualised experiences for customers and communities, more quickly and at scale”, the bank said in a statement.

“The collaboration with AWS marks a significant milestone in our commitment to driving digital innovation to deliver better customer outcomes and experiences, more quickly,” McMullan said.

“By leveraging AWS’s cloud infrastructure and latest AI capabilities, the AI Factory is set to accelerate the bank’s development time for AI-powered initiatives by around four times compared to our current rate.

“It will empower our engineers and AI scientists to embed AI and genAI capabilities in their day-to-day activities enabling increasing creativity and output.”

CBA is the first Australian organisation to use these AWS AI tools and services.

McMullan said CBA is aiming to be a pioneer in the use of AI by a large bank.

“We find that when AI-powered experiences drive demonstrably better outcomes for customers, this builds trust, confidence and ultimately engagement – and the more our customers engage with us, the better we can anticipate their needs,” he said.

“As a leader in AI innovation, this initiative isn’t just about advancing technology.

“It’s about shaping the future of banking, not only for our customers and our people, but for Australia more broadly.

“Harnessing the power of AI and cloud to fuel economic growth, drive innovation and create opportunities for all Australians is one way we are building a brighter future for all.”

Late last year, CBA announced that its hybrid text filter and AI-based scanner used to identify high-risk cases of technology-facilitated abuse would be made available for free to banks around the world.