Five outside-the-box ways your credit union can be using AI

Love it or hate it, artificial intelligence (AI) is here to stay. But while many of us equate AI with using ChatGPT to write content, the power of AI reaches far beyond that. Not to say ChatGPT isn’t a great tool for brainstorming and outlining copy, but the possibilities are endless when it comes to AI, and it’s not all generative, either. Here are just a few ways your credit union can use artificial intelligence to boost efficiency, creativity, and productivity.

To streamline search on Service Credit Union’s website, we recently partnered with an AI solutions provider focused on financial institutions, to implement their AI-powered search solution. With this tool, visitors to the website can get instant responses to their questions, rather than having to navigate an FAQ page to find exactly what they’re looking for. Using AI to improve search on your site means your members and prospective members are more likely to find what they’re looking for, reducing frustration and call center wait times, while increasing time spent on product pages.

We’ve all had at least one frustrating experience using voice commands on a customer service call, but AI has vastly improved that experience. Enabling an AI “voice assistant” can enhance the communication process, enable members to self-serve, and ensure that they can easily navigate through options and receive timely support.

This may not come as a surprise to some of my more tech-savvy peers, but AI can be a pretty effective partner in writing code, whether it’s Python, JavaScript or another programming language. AI can also be used to debug code, analyze its quality and even suggest solutions to coding issues. Some AI code generators can write as well as troubleshoot, while others specialize in one or another.

AI can be used to analyze forensic data for faster identification of cyber threats. There are a number of great cyber security platforms that use AI to provide real-time monitoring of networks, system and user behavior, enabling early detection before it becomes a real problem.

Predictive AI is significantly changing how focus groups are used. By analyzing data from previous focus groups, AI can make judgments on how products, services and content may be perceived by people of various demographics. While it’s unlikely AI can quite capture human emotion (that’s a scary discussion for a different day), it can create virtual replicas of consumer groups and therefore solid baselines for various personas you may want to target. It can also help analyze and summarize data from any focus groups you do host.

The list of AI uses goes on and on, from resizing marketing content, to task management to virtual meeting assistants and email organization. The key is to keep an open mind and be smart about your AI use, instead of seeing it as a way to cut corners while sacrificing quality (cough ... ChatGPT essays ... cough). If your credit union is still just dipping a toe into AI, perhaps it’s time to start your own AI committee or task force to explore what it can do for you. Have your colleagues share how they’ve used AI to make their life or job more efficient, and learn from each other. Or—just ask AI!