Humanoid Robot ‘Pepper’ has Canadian launch at ATB Financial

Don’t worry, it’s not taking any jobs, but a robot is coming to a Calgary bank near you.

On Tuesday, ATB Financial introduced Pepper, a four-foot tall humanoid robot that will engage with customers and eventually perform other services for the bank.

President and CEO Dave Mowat said it’s an early look into utilizing artificial intelligence.

“It’s not like we’re going to force people to deal with robots or anything like that,” he said. “But artificial intelligence lets you do some very kind of mundane things very quickly and with memory of you, and I think that’s what customers want.”

Mowat said they are going to experiment with how they use the robots, although they will be at select branches starting next May.

He said Pepper could ideally perform online chat with customers, answer call centre queries and help staff in back offices.

“I think the biggest thing is when companies sometimes introduce technology, they do it to make our life better as a bank and the reason we’ve got Pepper out is we’re going to try and figure out how we can use artificial intelligence to make the customer experience better,” he said.

Along with greeting and explaining products and services, Pepper can also take selfies and dance.

Pepper was developed by Softwood Robotics America in San Francisco and the robot is already in use in different parts of Asia and Europe.

“It’s our first partner in Canada overall, so this a very special moment for us,” Global Product Manager Bill Lott said.

Lott added Pepper has voice and face recognition and can actually detect if someone is happy and respond to questions appropriately.

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