JP Morgan has started rolling out its own platform for accessing unnamed third-party large language models.
The tool, known as "LLM Suite," was described as “ChatGPT like” in an internal memo. It will be used to help analysts with tasks like writing, generating ideas and summarizing documents.
Sources familiar with the tool told The Financial Times that about 15% of the bank’s staff have access to the new tool.
JP Morgan did not immediately respond to a request for comment on its new AI chatbot from Decrypt.
An internal memo shared with the news outlet described LLM Suite “as a research analyst that can offer information, solutions and advice on a topic."
JP Morgan declined to comment on the record on the news. But it did tell Decrypt in an emailed statement that although the new tool is called “LLM Suite,” it is not an independent large language model like ChatGPT. It is a user interface to access other third-party tools—but the bank declined to say what these third-party products are.
The news follows the bank’s CEO Jamie Dimon making several extremely bullish statements about AI over the past year. In the firm’s annual letter to shareholders, Dimon said the bank’s “use of AI has the potential to augment virtually every job” and to “impact our workforce composition."
Dimon said AI may “reduce certain job categories or roles, but it may create others as well.”
Outside of general employee productivity, Dimon also pointed towards “software engineering, customer service and operations, as well as in general employee productivity."
Mary Erdoes, head of the bank's asset and wealth management unit, pledged that every new starter at the firm would receive “prompt engineering training” to help them use AI tools at an investor event last month.
In May 2023, JP Morgan submitted an application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for an AI chatbot product called IndexGPT, that will be used for “analyzing and selecting securities tailored to customer needs.”
Nothing has been publicly disclosed yet about LLM Suite or whether it struggles with issues which have previously impacted large language models such as “hallucinating” data.
As JP Morgan doesn't publicly announce its analyst intake, it will be hard to estimate what impact, if any, this will have on hiring. The news follows many of Wall Street's largest banks imposing restrictions on their staff's use of ChatGPT.
Financial regulations in many parts of the world, including the U.S., enforce the strict handling of financial data by banks. This makes it difficult—but not impossible—for them to use large language models like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, where company data is stored on servers outside the bank's control.
Several of JPM’s competitors on Wall Street have been rolling out AI tools of their own based on technology from OpenAI.
Though JP Morgan’s new tool could potentially be one of the largest known chatbots developed in-house by an American bank (that we know of), several of JPM’s competitors on Wall Street have been rolling out AI tools of their own based on technology from OpenAI.
Last month, New York-based investment bank Morgan Stanley announced it would roll out a generative AI tool known as Debrief.
The bank said its chatbot will help its teams of financial advisors with tasks such as summarizing key points from meetings, drafting emails, and putting data into Salesforce.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.