Generative AI in banking, one year on from ChatGPT

ON NOV 30, 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, which captivated the world with its ability to produce humanlike text responses. The event ignited a surge of interest in generative artificial intelligence (AI), prompting organisations to explore how the technology could transform their operations. Banking executives have come under pressure to incorporate generative AI into business processes. Already, many leading firms are actively experimenting and laying the foundations to operationalise and harness its capabilities at scale.

Generative AI’s potential seems boundless, but the truly transformative applications in banking are still unknown. Looking ahead, one probable future is where banking value chains would remain familiar but banks would focus on applications, crafting a multitude of innovative generative AI use cases to streamline user experiences for both consumers and employees. In this vision, generative AI would become an integral, largely unnoticed component of daily life where users are “trained” to tolerate its limitations.

Today, most banks are still in the early stage of deploying generative AI and have yet to make significant adoption progress. Still, we have seen leading players proactively explore opportunities. Their immediate focus has been on developing lower-risk, internal-facing applications that demonstrate tangible productivity benefits in daily operations.