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A colleague of mine recently attended the BankAI conference in Chicago. One of the most interesting presentations, according to him, involved a Midwestern credit union sharing details of its chatbot rollout fueled by the artificial intelligence (AI) tools of a fintech partner.

What set the story apart from the pack was the credit union’s size, a shade under $300 million in assets. It’s often assumed that AI projects are the domain of the largest financial institutions; certainly, their efforts gain the most attention. Bank of America continues to tout the mass adoption of its Erica virtual assistant, and Wells Fargo, Capital One and JPMorgan Chase have spearheaded high profile AI rollouts as well.

The term artificial intelligence (AI for short) has attained buzzword status, and not in an entirely positive sense. Too often the technology is seen as a way to replace humans with machines. However, as the newest SRM Academy report, "From Artificial Intelligence to Intelligent Automation: A Playbook for Financial Institutions" makes clear, this is a “glass half empty” perception that banks and credit unions cannot allow to slow their adoption of this transformation tool.

Large name-brand financial institutions have already launched numerous AI initiatives with mostly positive results. There are ample opportunities for smaller institutions to follow suit with proof of concept projects that can garner internal support and expertise. Otherwise, as AI is increasingly used to enhance the consumer’s experience, regional and community players risk facing an increasing gap in their competition for the next generation of consumers.