Meet Jamie, an AI invention styled as a 25-year-old New Zealand woman, who started work on Tuesday morning. Jamie's first job is to chat with customers on the 30 questions the bank gets asked most often by customers.
Jamie has a human face, voice and expressions. ANZ will be trialling Jamie at http://help.anz.co.nz. All of the questions she can answer are general in nature and do not require any specific customer information.
"Through the trial, we want to see if Jamie will appeal to those who might not be as comfortable using our other digital channels," Liz Maguire Head of Digital & Transformation at ANZ Bank said.
Though "she" is capable of learning, it's "moderated" learning, so customers trying to teach Jamie swear words, or bad habits, will fail. But chatting with Jamie for a few minutes results in her dropping hints that there's something more to her than a series of rote answers. Ask her about her weekend, and she may tell you she enjoys ice dance. That's because Jamie has a back story, created to make her seem more human.
There's a trend for digital humans built for corporations to be avatars of young women, often with gender neutral names like Alex, or in this case Jamie. ANZ partnered with New Zealand tech company Soul Machines to develop Jamie. Soul Machines has made a name globally by humanising artificial intelligence.


























































































































































