Wells Fargo bank testing Facebook 'chatbot' to communicate directly with customers

Wells Fargo & Company is testing a "chatbot", an automated program that can communicate with the bank's customers on Facebook's messaging platform to give them information on their accounts and help them reset their passwords. The US bank said on Tuesday that it is piloting the virtual assistant with several hundred employees, and plans to extend testing to a few thousand customers later this spring. Wells Fargo's chatbot will use artificial intelligence to respond to natural language messages from users, such as how much money they have in their accounts, and where the nearest bank ATM is. Chatbots have risen in popularity in finance and other industries over the past few months because recent improvements in artificial intelligence have made them better at interacting and interpreting human language. Banks and other financial firms are hopeful chatbots can be used to provide better and continuous customer service at a fraction of the cost of large call centres populated by humans.