Most-read AI stories of 2023

December 27, 2023 3:00 PM

Artificial intelligence was the focus of an avalanche of hype, curiosity and experimentation in 2023. Many banks played with large language models like ChatGPT, thought about use cases for the technology and worried about getting left behind if they didn't try to learn about and test the technology.

But the AI stories American Banker readers turned to the most during the past year were competitive intelligence: Everyone wanted to know what their peers are doing with AI. Articles about how Ally Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Synchrony Bank and others are deploying AI for uses like personalization, fraud detection and drafting emails were the most popular.

Read on to see which American Banker AI articles were read most in 2023.

Sathish Muthukrishnan, the chief information, data and digital officer at Ally Bank..jpg

Ally Bank's foray into generative AI: 'We don't want to stand still'

Ally Financial dove headfirst into generative artificial intelligence after ChatGPT made its splash at the end of 2022.

The Detroit bank formed a working group around generative AI in early 2023. It met with both Microsoft and Amazon in Seattle in February and hashed out a contract with Microsoft to use its enterprise-grade generative AI software in April. The team in June started building Ally.ai, a proprietary cloud-based platform that developers will use for AI-related projects, and launched a pilot for its first use case. The pilot moved to production on July 31.

"We do not want to stand still," said Sathish Muthukrishnan, the chief information, data and digital officer at Ally Bank.

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JPMorgan Chase using ChatGPT-like large language models to detect fraud

In Ryan Schmiedl's work protecting JPMorgan Chase from fraud of all kinds, business-email compromise has been the most devastating type of attack lately.

Fraudsters look for the weakest link, the place that is least protected, Schmiedl said. And they often find it somewhere inside a corporate client.

"In a lot of cases, they're attacking corporates, because there are so many people in a corporate entity and they don't communicate a lot," Schmiedl — who is global head of payments, trust and safety at the bank — said on a panel at Fintech Connect.

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Here's how banks are using and experimenting with generative AI

Large language models could change how banks interact with customers and their own knowledge bases, and how they protect themselves and their customers from fraud and financial crimes. Few, however, have released products that actually deploy the nascent technology.

That has left smaller banks that are in the learning and experimentation stages to take cues from technology leaders on where large language models — the kind of technology that powers OpenAI's ChatGPT — will become most useful in banking.

Large language models are one example of generative AI, a type of artificial intelligence that can generate content to mimic text, images, videos or other content on which it has trained. According to Michael Haney, head of product strategy at Galileo Financial Technologies, ChatGPT put this technology on many banks' radars very suddenly.

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JPMorgan Chase aims to create $1.5 billion in value with AI by year-end

JPMorgan Chase is on track to invest more than $15 billion in technology in 2023, with the goal of driving $3 billion in cost savings and efficiencies across infrastructure and data initiatives, as the bank continues to execute on the firm-wide strategy it laid out last year.

Lori Beer, global chief information officer, said at the company's investor day that it is investing almost equally in running the bank and changing the bank, evaluating generative artificial intelligence applications and staying on track with its infrastructure modernization.

JPMorgan Chase expects that its investments in data analytics and AI to increase customer personalization and client insights will deliver $1.5 billion in business impact by the end of 2023. The bank's infrastructure modernization, which includes optimizing its data centers and migrating applications to public and private cloud, is slated to bring in an additional $1.5 billion in cost savings and efficiencies over the next three years.

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'It's worth all the hype': SouthState Bank deploys ChatGPT-like tech

Banks have had a range of reactions to ChatGPT and other large language models. JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Bank of America, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo have all restricted employees' use of OpenAI's ChatGPT, according to multiple reports. These banks fear sensitive or confidential information will be leaked out to the public system.

But SouthState Bank in Winter Haven, Florida, is enthusiastically embracing an enterprise version of ChatGPT.

"It's game changing," said Chris Nichols, director of capital markets, at American Banker's Digital Banking Conference last week. "It's worth all the hype."

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AWS, Google and Microsoft are in an AI arms race. Banks are watching.

The three big cloud computing vendors — Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft — have marshaled much of their forces around generative AI. Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, creator of the massively popular ChatGPT generative AI search engine. Last month, AWS announced a $100 million investment in a generative AI innovation center. Google has invested an estimated $300 million in AI startups. All three offer a slew of proprietary technologies for developers, data scientists and laypeople to create and use generative AI and large language models.

At the AWS Summit this week in New York, for instance, speakers talked of nothing else.

"Generative AI has captured our imaginations for its ability to create images and videos, write stories and even generate code," said Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS's vice president of database, analytics and machine learning. "I believe it'll transform every application, industry and business." Though it's been around for years, it's reached a tipping point, he said.

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Truist prepares to use IBM's quantum computers for cybersecurity and AI

Truist Financial is getting ready for quantum computing through a new partnership with IBM.

The Charlotte-based bank announced Wednesday that it will join the IBM Quantum Accelerator program and welcome IBM to the bank's Innovator in Residence program.

Truist aims to get quantum-safe ready in the area of cybersecurity, where many worry that hackers will be able to exploit quantum technology before key targets like banks do. The bank would also like to develop and use new applications that can take advantage of the technology.

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How Carol Juel is leading Synchrony through the hazards of generative AI

In Synchrony Financial's newly decked out Experience Center overlooking Bryant Park in New York City, Carol Juel, chief technology officer and chief operations officer at the $108 billion-asset bank, leads a team testing innovative ideas and technologies.

Juel is not actually there all the time; like the rest of the staff, she works in a hybrid manner, some days from home and some from the company's Stamford, Connecticut, headquarters. During a recent visit, one employee, Lisa, rolled in on a Double Robotics video conferencing robot while working from her home in Atlanta.

Juel leads digital and cultural transformation work across the organization and has spent several billion dollars on this work, using hackathons, incubators and accelerators. During an interview, she showed off the new space and shared some of her plans for generative AI.

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Can banks win at AI?

Does advanced artificial intelligence provide an advantage to banks or to their fintech competitors?

This question came up during JPMorgan Chase's third-quarter earnings call.

Longtime bank analyst Michael Mayo, managing director at Wells Fargo Securities, questioned JPMorgan Chase's increased spending on technology, including on AI. The bank's expenses of $8.5 billion were up 7% year on year, largely driven by continued investments in staffing, primarily in the front office and technology.

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Bank, fintech leaders weigh in on the pros and cons of generative AI

The introduction of tools powered by generative artificial intelligence has created a bit of fervor in the financial services space, as institutions engaged with more established AI products begin exploring the capabilities and vulnerabilities associated with the new technology.

Banks have deployed individual use cases to help strengthen internal operations across areas such as fraud detection, code development, customer support and many others, but remain hesitant to fully commit to adoption at a larger scale without further guidance from regulators.

Speakers on a panel discussion at The Clearing House's annual conference in New York offered insights into the roles that both traditional and generative AI play in the evolution of the banking and payments industries while discussing the challenges facing organizations struggling to determine where it can be used best.

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