Bank of New York Mellon has given dozens of AI agent 'digital employees' their own logins and will soon provide them with email accounts.
BNY chief information officer Leigh-Ann Russell tells the Wall Street Journal that the bank's AI hub has created two worker personas: one that cleans up code and another that validates payment instructions.
The agents have direct managers and, because they have their own logins to access apps like their human colleagues, can work autonomously. Each instance of the agent works in a defined narrow team to avoid giving them access to too much information.
BNY is planning to give the digital employees their own email accounts and possibly access to Microsoft Teams so that they can contact their human colleagues with issues. The bank also intends to build agents to carry out other tasks but stresses it is still hiring humans.