The US subsidiary of Spanish banking group BBVA has teamed up with the company behind Siri to develop Lola, its own virtual assistant.
According to TechCrunch, BBVA Compass and SRI International - the company behind the iPhone 4S personal assistant Siri - based Lola on a real Madrid-based sales agent of the same name.
The virtual assistant appears in a chat box on the screen, with customers able to type or speak questions about their accounts, such as 'what is my balance?'.
The system is designed to be more specific and in-depth than Siri, according to SRI's Bill Mark, who told Xconomy: "We felt we had to go beyond Siri because here we want a system that can really be an assistant, meaning software that knows us, knows what to do, knows how to do it, and then does it."
BBVA Compass began testing Lola on its Web site this week and hopes to offer the technology to all customers as soon as possible with licensing deals with other banks also an option under consideration.