The bank plans to test the guardrails and security of the platform as lenders become more interested in AI and how it can be used for their services.
NAB group executive for technology and enterprise operations Patrick Wright says that the bank wants the AI to be able to interact with staff and bank networks on behalf of customers, but the current capabilities of the agents is the main challenge.
"Customers will expect one day to interact with us through agents," he said in an interview, adding that the next year will see the bank do pilots and testing.
“Security is the thing I think about,” added Wright.
“We’ve got to do it in a way that’s safe.”
NAB has previously outlined how it wants to use AI internally, but this marks its first mention of customer facing AI.
In March, NAB announced an expansion of its AI-powered customer engagement services, saying it had bolstered its “customer brain.”
The bank said it wants the system to range from supporting marketing campaigns and recognising milestones of customer debt repayment, to covering total dispute resolution management workflows.
"A big focus for us is how we actually scale. We're wanting to get into the thousands,” said NAB acting executive for customer decisioning and data science Lisa Marchant.
“The other thing that we're really focused on in terms of our strategy is really thinking about when we're choosing between multiple actions for a customer that the right decision is made.
“We're really focused on a balance of both value and quality,” she said.
According to Bloomberg, NAB has also said that it plans to currently stay with US-made AI models due to ethical concerns that are enforced on US developers, such as being used for cyber attacks and copyright breaches.
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