Japan’s Top Banks Tap AI Chatbots to Lighten Workload

April 18, 2023 Japan Emerging Markets

TOKYO — Japan’s three biggest financial groups are joining the generative AI bandwagon, moving to adopt artificial-intelligence-powered chatbots to help with reports and other internal tasks.

Generative AI bots are trained on massive bodies of text to give sophisticated answers to user prompts. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which kicked the trend into high gear, has more than 100 million users.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group will begin using a chatbot this summer for such work as drafting approval requests and responding to internal inquiries, aiming to boost productivity by saving employees time and effort on cumbersome paperwork. To prevent data leaks, employee inputs will be excluded from the AI’s training data and blocked from outside access.

Once the chatbot is in widespread use internally, MUFG plans to team up with Microsoft Japan this year to develop its own AI bot tailored to the group’s work needs. In the future, it will consider using the technology to answer customer questions online.

While such big names as Morgan Stanley have been delving into AI chatbot technology elsewhere, it has mostly been startups leading the way in Japan. These moves by MUFG and its peers could spur other major Japanese companies to follow their lead.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group announced Tuesday that it has begun trials on an AI chatbot developed in partnership with Microsoft Japan. It plans to initially roll out the tool to all employees of Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp. by around this fall.

The assistant will be able to answer staff questions based on publicly available information and the bank’s own data. SMFG sees it being used to look up business regulations or compile basic information on customers to help draft documents, for example. The chatbot will be limited to a private network to keep data from leaking.

Mizuho Financial Group plans to introduce an AI tool for internal use as well. It is considering working with Microsoft Japan to develop a chatbot of its own in order to safeguard sensitive information.