

Cathy Bessant, the bank’s CTO, explained the bank’s position at a 2018 Bloomberg event: “Our mentality is protection and confidentiality from the start.” Its AI-powered chatbot, Erica, is available only on its apps and website, where it’s far easier to make sure it’s responding to an authenticated customer. Solved the problem by skipping the smart speaker and setting up its own channels. According to a 2018 consumer survey conducted by Forrester Research, 54% of respondents worry that a voice-assistant speaker will compromise the security of their private information. Skills aren’t even allowed to ask for a credit-card number, because reading a card number aloud is a security risk. Skills for companies like American Expressįor example, are clunky to log into and strictly limited to functions such as reading back balance amounts. The best-rated applications on Alexa play music or other audio, tell stories, and deliver quiz games. That’s why, despite selling more than 100 million Alexa devices and persuading more than 50,000 companies to build skills for Alexa, Amazon’s platform features few applications that deliver customer service. “Amazon’s platform features few applications that deliver customer service.
