Axis Bank may use ChatGPT to talk to customers

ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model that interacts with users in a conversational way.

Axis Bank may look at using ChatGPT’s enterprise version for enhancing communication services with customers, said Sameer Shetty, president and head, digital business and transformation at the private sector lender.

“We may look forward to working on use cases to enhance communication with customers using ChatGPT’s enterprise version,” Shetty said in an interaction with Moneycontrol.

ChatGPT is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) model that interacts with users in a conversational way. It is based on a large language model (LLM), a tool that is trained with massive amounts of data and information to accurately predict conversational behaviour.

Global banks like JPMorgan and Deutsche Bank are planning to use ChatGPT-like chatbots and AI models.

Shetty said the banks can use ChatGPT for conversational and personalised services.

“We have some AI experiments in place which may show results in the next 12-15 months. Alongside these use cases, we may look at using ChatGPT’s enterprise version for chatbot service to provide customised information to our customers,” Shetty said.

Currently, Shetty said that the bank uses AI, machine learning (ML) and data analytics tools for internal calculation purposes, to give recommendations to its customers on their spends and banking services and for some other purposes.

“We have revamped our mobile banking application with AI tools to make it more customised and consumer-oriented,” Shetty said.

Also read: How can banks use ChatGPT?

Banks, both in the private sector and public sector, are working closely on their technology using AI and ML tools to expand digital banking services.

For example, the country’s largest private sector bank, HDFC Bank, has its chatbot Eva, which provides customers and non-customers with information about the lender’s banking services.

The country’s largest bank, State Bank of India, in its annual report for FY23 said that it will enhance the use of business analytics, AI and ML in decision-making and operations.

For Axis Bank, the lender in June 2023 launched One View, a service where customers can link their different banking accounts and manage the same on its mobile application.

This comes after the bank has seen growing demand for digital adoption in the last three years. “Around 67 percent of our total service requests are from digital channels,” said Shetty.

The lender’s results for the FY23 showed that the number of digital transactions increased from 91 percent in FY22 to 95 percent. Other than this, digital loans have also grown across some segments by an average of 94 percent on a year-on-year basis.

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“We have made an overall investment in our technology of nearly Rs 1,300 crore in building new data centres, data loss policies and other initiatives,” said Shetty.

Razorpay in May 2023 partnered with Axis Bank and the National Payments Council of India to launch Turbo UPI for making faster payments and reducing potential failures.

HDFC Bank in January 2023 partnered with Microsoft to use Microsoft Cloud services for its digital banking needs.

Among public sector banks, Bank of Baroda in May 2023 partnered with Tech Mahindra to enhance its digital solutions concerning customer complaints and queries.

Shetty said that his bank is also looking at enhancing partnerships with more fintech companies.

“After the FLDG (first loss default guarantee) guidelines brought in by the RBI (Reserve Bank of India), there is a regulatory assurance,” Shetty said.