A private bank takes the lead to launch artificial intelligence (AI) tools, in league with a newly formed federal agency, the Artificial Intelligence Centre (AIC).

The Cooperative Bank of Oromia (CBO) is set to launch an AI-based chatbot, the first for the banking industry. The Bank, 17 years in business, signed an agreement with AIC to develop the chatbot in August last year, hoping to facilitate seamless live communications to bolster its customer service.

The chatbot will be operable on Telegram and the Bank's website in three languages fully developed by Ethiopian professionals: Amharic, English and Oromiffa. This makes CBO, which serves some 7.4 million account holders at its 470 branches, the first bank to embrace an AI-enabled customer service management system.

What makes the AI-enabled chatbots different from the more common rule-based chatbots is the machine learning to understand the context and intent of a question before formulating responses, according to Sintayehu Zekaryas, vice director for Finance, Transportation and Geo-spatial at AIC and one of the bot's developers. AI chatbots generate their own answers to more complicated questions using natural-language responses.

"The chatbot learns from every conversation it has with the customers, going through the previous interaction to improve future responses," said Sintayehu. "It'll also help to understand customer’s choices and preferences."

Formed in September last year to develop applications for use in agriculture, education, health and public security, the AIC developed the chatbot free of charge, and the Bank is hoping that the AI programme will help cut down on customer service costs and human errors.

"We wanted the chatbot because it's accessible and doesn't require customers to memorise ambiguous USSD codes for different services," Aman Semir, vice president of information systems at the Bank, told Fortune. "The majority of our customers are young and tech-savvy. It`ll be easy to serve them."

The chatbot was first trained in the English language before Afan Oromo and Amharic were incorporated during the second phase, Taye Girma (PhD), deputy head of research and development at AIC, told Fortune.