Cash App’s Moneybot might know your spending habits better than you do
By KEN SWEET NEW YORK AP Imagine if your bank could move money for you with only the slightest of digital nods for your approval Or that could tell you that you re overspending but more importantly know how to address that overspending and put you on better financial footing Related Articles Google accused in suit of using Gemini AI tool to snoop on users License expired California revokes K commercial driver s licenses held by immigrants IRS boosts retirement limits Ticker Mortgage rate tick up again Starbucks workers strike at union stores Cold feet on Wall Street Arena drops on worries around AI interest rates That s what you ll get with Moneybot a new financial services chatbot shown off this week by Cash App that will be slowly introduced into its banking app this winter Unlike existing bank chatbots which can handle routine tasks like changing an address Moneybot can take advanced actions for a customer like creating a savings plan buying or selling stock or even evaluating a customer s spending habits Moneybot is part of the next generation of chatbots using what the tech industry calls agentic AI which turns tools like ChatGPT into an AI agent that can take action online on a person s behalf That means instead of just writing text answering questions or recommending products ascertained online an agentic chatbot could also buy a product Amazon now has Rufus to go with Alexa which both either provide information on products or can buy things on customers behalf Walmart is rolling out Chat Buy and Microsoft has Copilot Shopping Agentic AI for being so new is already causing selected argument Amazon is suing an AI chatbot company Perplexity for alleged computer fraud over AI shopping agents that Amazon says are disguising themselves as human buyers to access customer accounts without Amazon s permission Perplexity has denied the declares Traditional banks have had chatbots for a while notably Bank of America s Erica or Ask Amex from American Express but have hesitated to roll out agentic AI They worry about achievable liability if a chatbot buys a product by mistake for a customer or is maliciously used to buy things it is not supposed to Our top priority is to keep our customers and clients information safe above all else commented Mark Birkhead chief facts officer at JPMorgan Chase in an interview with the consulting firm McKinsey back in June on the issue of why the bank hasn t rolled out agentic AI yet to customers Cash App on the other hand is diving in head first One notable feature of Moneybot is its prompts and suggestions When Moneybot launches it does an analysis of the the customer s transactions and spending and gives them independent recommendations on actions they could take Unlike other bank chatbots which take you to other parts of a banks website Moneybot s transactions and analysis happen inside a single screen Cash App s executives see Moneybot becoming the primary way people interact with CashApp in the future Want to know your biggest spending categories instantly and how to cut your spending Moneybot gives several suggestions in a matter of seconds showing you the merchants you spent with Need to save toward a vacation in six months Moneybot creates an automated savings plan for you with only a couple of prompts Want to put money into the stock sector It takes only a request and confirmation in Moneybot which will buy Tesla stock for you or even bitcoin Moneybot will remind you however that it does not give investing advice Moneybot may even anticipate why the customer is opening up the app in the first place We have such a deep understanding of who you are that it s almost a failure if we have to rely on customers to ask right questions announced Owen Jennings executive officer and business lead at Block in an interview Company executives pointed out that despite having these agent abilities Moneybot will still need proceeding confirmation from the user to do its money-moving tasks But that confirmation is often just a simple push of a button or a yes in a chat box Cash App executives say Moneybot uses three different AI models choosing the the bulk appropriate one for the customer s question Various are easier to recognize including the eager-to-please tone that often comes with ChatGPT A Cash App employee demo ing Moneybot much to his chagrin exhibited that he spent heavily at Nordstrom last month Moneybot kindly suggested he might want to cut back on his clothing purchases if he requirements to save money There are things Moneybot cannot do because of the legal and privacy questions that have yet to be answered Moneybot won t offer you a loan but feels like it could do so if the toggle were ever turned on Because of the way the prompts are written Cash App employees acknowledged there could be privacy and legal implications with what Moneybot suggests if appropriate guardrails are not put into place Policymakers have raised concerns about how these chatbots could steer customers into one product or another even if one product may not be in the best interest for the customer For instance what s to stop a future version of Moneybot from favoring a buy now pay later loan from AfterPay also owned by Cash App s parent company Block for purchases instead of Affirm or Klarna If firms cannot manage using a new equipment in a lawful way then they should not use the system commented Rohit Chopra in when he was director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Chopra spent much of his tenure at the bureau raising concerns about the adoption of AI in financial services In the meantime asking for a loan inside Moneybot will transfer a customer to a human agent Not surprisingly Moneybot has the usual disclosure detected at the bottom of majority of chatbots these days Artificial intelligence can make mistakes Somehow that feels a bit more significant in banking than an AI chatbot accidentally providing the wrong amount of cumin in a fajita recipe or buying the wrong size of shirt An earlier version of this story misspelled Moneybot
