Daiwa to Start Using AI Chatbot Spurned by Wall Street Banks

Daiwa Securities Group Inc. has joined other major Japanese financial firms in embracing artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, moving in the opposite direction from Wall Street banks.

(Bloomberg) — Daiwa Securities Group Inc. has joined other major Japanese financial firms in embracing artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, moving in the opposite direction from Wall Street banks. 

Japan’s second-biggest brokerage plans to adopt the ChatGPT technology from this month for all of its 9,000 domestic employees, the company said in a statement Tuesday, adding that it has “limitless potential.”

The development follows a Nikkei report that Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. will begin using a chatbot for work such as drafting approval requests and responding to internal inquiries. Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. has begun trials on an AI chatbot developed in partnership with Microsoft Japan, the newspaper said, while Mizuho Financial Group Inc. also plans an AI tool for internal use.

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Daiwa said ChatGPT can help employees gather information in English in addition to saving time and cutting the costs of creating documents. “We decided that the most beneficial step would be for us to quickly, widely apply the technology to explore new ways to use it,” the firm said in the statement. 

Sam Altman, the co-founder and chief executive officer of ChatGPT maker OpenAI, met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Tokyo earlier this month to discuss the technology’s potential and how to mitigate the downsides. 

Wall Street firms are clamping down on ChatGPT. Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Wells Fargo & Co. are among lenders that have banned usage of the new tool, Bloomberg reported in February. 

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