Ally Financial Inc. in Detroit, the nation’s largest all-digital bank and a leading auto financing business, reports its more than 10,000 employees now have access to its proprietary enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Ally.ai.
With access to Ally.ai, employees can leverage generative AI to streamline everyday tasks, such as drafting emails, creating meeting agendas, developing first drafts, and proofreading copy.
Ally.ai was designed with flexibility to integrate with commercially available large language models (LLMs) and other AI capabilities, and also can help employees analyze data to make informed decisions while allowing for out-of-the box, creative thinking and brainstorming ideas, say Ally officials.
“As we build the future of banking, we know the importance of keeping technology at the center of our growth strategy in a responsible way,” says Sathish Muthukrishnan, chief information, data, and digital officer atAlly.
“Now, with an AI-empowered workforce, our teammates will have a richer experience and benefit from the intentional approach we’ve taken to driving AI fluency through education, while keeping the human factor at the center of every decision.”
In support of its AI technology deployment, Ally became the first U.S. bank member of the Responsible AI Institute. As part of its generative AI approach, Ally implemented processes designed to help ensure strong data security, robust customer privacy, and rigorous model risk review before deployment, and routine monitoring of outcomes.
Ally says it integrates risk and control requirements from the outset in all data and AI projects, embedding controls in parallel to building solutions to carefully manage challenges and risks concerning the broader use of data.
Since Ally.ai launched in 2023, the company has moved specific generative AI use cases into production that it states demonstrated clear business value during pilot phases. Ally’s call summarization use case integrates Ally.ai into the technology stack, which has helped frontline teammates better serve approximately 5 million customer calls.
Over the first 18 months, 2,200 employees across the business, including marketing, audit, risk, and technology teammates, received training and gained access to use Ally.ai as a tool to increase their general efficiency. Nearly a quarter million prompts have been submitted to the platform, and in the last three months, more than 10,000 employees continued their education with Ally’s first company-wide training module.
In support of its AI-empowered workforce, Ally offers the following resources to increase AI fluency and effectiveness:
Required training: All employees using generative AI participate in generative AI risk and controls training prior to gaining access to Ally.ai.
Ally AI Fluency Hub: Employees have access to internal resources for deeper learning to increase effectiveness with generative AI, including tailored prompt examples based on business needs.
AI Days: Each of Ally’s quarterly AI Days features external speakers and explores best practices to advance adoption and effectiveness with AI. They are attended by more than 1,000 employees on average.
AI Community of Practice and Office Hours: Ally hosts bi-weekly sessions where hundreds of employees from across the enterprise share examples of how they are effectively implementing AI, and office hours allow teams to workshop ideas with our in-house team of AI experts.
AI Playbook: Ally’s AI Playbook prepares employees to use AI responsibly, keeping humans at the center of decision-making.
“While we were early AI adopters, this is just the start for us,” says Muthukrishnan. “As the world shifts toward more personalized experiences, banking is no exception. We are continuously looking for ways to use our data and our teammates’ expertise to create extraordinary experiences for customers and dealers as they handle their money and reach for their financial goals.”
