It goes without saying there is much attention on how artificial intelligence (AI) will change our lives. Now the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) is sharing how it's aiming to help customers with its AI technology.
Banks have been adopting new technologies over a long period. You only need to look at how ATMs and online banking have reshaped how customers use banks.
AI is the new frontier. Its technology can be used to help businesses provide improved customer services and analyse large amounts of data.
CBA shares details on how AI can help abused women
The ASX bank share is taking steps to ensure its AI can be used for altruistic purposes. The bank is aiming to "reduce technology-facilitated abuse internationally by making its artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques available for free, to any bank in the world".
This AI can help identify digital payment transactions that include harassing, threatening, or offensive messages.
By using this detection method, CBA has been able to identify 1,500 high-risk cases annually.
CBA Group Customer Advocate Angela MacMillan said:
Financial abuse occurs when money is used to gain control over a partner and is one of the most powerful ways to keep someone trapped in an abusive relationship. Sadly we see that perpetrators use all kinds of ways to circumvent existing measures such as using the messaging field to send offensive or threatening messages when making a digital transaction.
We developed this technology because we noticed that some customers were using transaction descriptions as a way to harass or threaten others.
By sharing our source code and model with any bank in the world, it will help financial institutions have better visibility of technology-facilitated abuse. This can help to inform action the bank may choose to take to help protect customers.
How will it work with banks globally?
CBA said its model and source code, built by CBA, are available this week through the bank's partnership with H2O.ai on GitHub, the world's largest platform for hosting source code.
The bank revealed it introduced an automatic block filter in 2020 to stop transactions that include threatening, harassing, or abusive language. This has blocked nearly one million transactions since 2020, so it seems to be working.
This announcement follows the launch of CBA's pilot referral program with the New South Wales police earlier in August. Under the pilot, the bank can refer perpetrators of financial abuse to the police — with customer consent.
CBA share price snapshot
Since the start of the year, Commonwealth Bank shares are virtually flat although the bank's share price has gained 42% over the past five years.
