By Isabelle Bousquette
Six months after BBVA signed on as one of OpenAI's biggest financial services customers, the Madrid-based bank is optimistic about ChatGPT's capabilities.
But while users are reporting initial productivity increases, questions remain about how far the tool will scale and integrate with complex internal systems.
"We still need to learn a lot," said Elena Alfaro, BBVA's Head of Global AI Adoption. "In the next six months, I can tell you that we are going to increase our ChatGPT user base. What comes after -- data will tell us."
BBVA in March signed an agreement with OpenAI for 3,000 ChatGPT Enterprises licenses, which began rolling out in May. The deal triggered an "explosion of creativity" across Spain's second-largest bank by market capitalization, Alfaro said.
OpenAI and BBVA declined to share the value of the deal.
ChatGPT Enterprise, a version of ChatGPT with privacy and security controls needed for business use, allows employees to craft "GPTs" designed to facilitate specific tasks or processes. So far BBVA employees across various functions including legal, risk, marketing, talent and finance have created over 2,900. They can handle tasks such as translating the intent behind risk-specific phrases like "write-off" or draft answers to questions from retail banking clients.
Initial users are reporting productivity increases, BBVA said, with 80% saying the tools help save more than two hours of work a week. But questions remain about tangible bottom-line results and scaling the tool. Integrating it with complex internal systems and databases can be a struggle, said Alfaro.
Some potential use cases would require the kind of deep integrations with company systems and databases that are extremely difficult for ChatGPT Enterprise today, Alfaro said. While the tool can be fed with information from static documents, it doesn't naturally integrate with complicated databases, she added.
OpenAI said ChatGPT Enterprise's Action feature allows users to integrate ChatGPT with existing enterprise applications and databases, adding that many customers have integrated the tool with their databases successfully.
"We have systems that are very complex. And it's not that simple to think of an integration of a tool -- let's say GPT -- with them," Alfaro said. "This is something that we are discovering right now."
BBVA isn't alone. As businesses move beyond AI experimentation into the real world, they can face many cultural and technological hurdles. Vendors have rushed to accommodate, with some baking AI tools into distribution channels as well as offering more bespoke services.
OpenAI Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap said, "We're really early with ChatGPT Enterprise...I expect that a lot of the things that are the needs of enterprises, as we hear them and digest them, we'll start to kind of build them in."
OpenAI said it has more than one million paying business clients, including users of ChatGPT Enterprise, which targets companies with more than 100 employees, and ChatGPT Edu, its product for universities. OpenAI's enterprise partnerships include Moderna and Morgan Stanley.
Most of OpenAI's revenue still comes from its consumer business and the stakes for making things work with enterprises are high, said Stefan Slowinski, global head of software research at BNP Paribas Exane. Enterprises are the main source of IT spending and financial services make up a significant share, so it is critical for OpenAI to show it can make things work with a big customer like BBVA, he said.
So far, BBVA's engagement data and surveys show promising initial results, Alfaro said, adding she is happy to see employees be creative with ChatGPT.
BBVA has scaled up to 3,300 ChatGPT licenses and plans to add more in 2025. Next year, the bank also aims to track more tangible returns in terms of savings, though Alfaro isn't stressing that area yet.
"If you have somebody telling them all day, please tell me the dollars you're saving, tell me the more revenue, et cetera, I think we might get the opposite result," she said, adding that, "we think the value of this is much bigger than whatever small savings that we could measure today."
Alfaro said she is also thinking carefully about how a wider user base might feel about working with ChatGPT. "So far we have a few thousand users that are very happy to start using this technology. But we don't know if everybody will be," she said. "This is something that we need to learn."
Write to Isabelle Bousquette at isabelle.bousquette@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
November 21, 2024 07:00 ET (12:00 GMT)
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