Banks these days are using numerous chatbots which act as a digital assistant in offering their services to the customers.
There are many female chatbots named Amy, Eva, Erica, Mia, Inga and Cora that are being used by many banks to act as a virtual assistant for their banking services. These bots have not only helped banks in cutting their costs as they no longer require 24/7 human call service centers and are also engaging more clients on their websites.
Are banks trying to perpetuate gender stereotypes?
The sudden increase in using the female bots interfaces as assistants for banks has raised concerns that are banks trying to perpetuate women’s role as assistants. Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa had already received their fair share of criticism when they were launched.
Different Chatbots are serving the same purpose
A recent analysis done by Forbes has discovered that the top banks of Europe are trying to boost their sales and rankings by attracting the customers through chatbots with female interfaces on their websites and applications. HSBC bank is using a chatbot named Amy.
The Deutsche Bank is promoting its services by using Debbie. While the ING bank of Netherlands is using its multipurpose chatbot Inga, which also responds with empathy while a customer claims that they have lost their credit card or they cannot track their transactions.
Numerous other banks are using unnamed chat assistants including Santander, Barclays, and Societe Generale, while Agricole is using a male AI Bot named Hector.
Banks representatives discarded the Forbe’s study
Many bank representatives negated the study done by Forbe’s and said that they are not trying to implement any ideas about stereotyping and are just highlighting the conversing abilities and leadership of the females.
Gender-based discrimination is a grave issue that the world is facing today. The newly implemented chatbots with female interfaces are just a small part of it. The voice-based chatbots are known for doing the tasks that are viewed as menial by many. Furthermore, these AI bots should not be a symbol of male domination or women subversion.
There is also a problem with these bots that should be taken into consideration while making new chatbots that often the intelligent bots are named after males and less intelligent and serving bots are named only after females.