LAS VEGAS – Artificial intelligence agent-only financial transactions will never happen, PNC CEO Bill Demchak said Monday.
“No [bank] is going to let people transact inside of accounts without a human in the loop. It’s just not going to happen – and if somebody does, they'll be defrauded,” he said during an appearance at the Money20/20 conference in Las Vegas. Then “you’ll read about it in the paper.”
PNC is making an aggressive AI push, building out what Demchak has previously called its “own AI factory.”
The bank has paused its major mergers-and-acquisitions efforts to avoid slowing its AI progress in a way that could “destroy massive value,” the CEO said during the bank’s third-quarter earnings call last week.
But at Money20/20 on Monday, Demchak warned that agents transacting without a human control function could “mess with people’s lives.”
Technology companies like Meta, which launched its personal AI agent Muse six weeks ago, would need to hold themselves liable for any issues caused by agentic transactions, Demchak suggested.
“There'd have to be a massive liability shift that these guys took on the liability associated with breaking all the crap they're about to break,” Demchak said. “They’re kids in a room with a new toy and they're messing around with money … This isn't a game. This isn't like normal technology where you're allowed to break stuff and figure it out later. You're messing with people's lives. It's money.”
Agents can have a place in transacting, he said, maybe to “organize it for you” or “give you good ideas.” But he said he’s “scared to death” about fraud possibilities with AI agents, and banks need to put more friction in the system – not less – with agents involved.
Several major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Citi, are blocking AI agents from accessing customer accounts.
Demchak advised tech companies to “stand up and say, ‘I'm going to take care of anybody, any one of your customers I destroy. I will own that liability.’”
If PNC were to roll out a Muse-like product and tell customers to use it, “I would be in jail or in front of Congress in a week for that product,” Demchak said.
“There's no security, right? There's no data storage,” Demchak said. “If a bank tried to introduce that, we'd be shut down in a day. Tech companies, they're cool. They can do whatever they want and break stuff, particularly if we're willing to pay the bill. But we're not willing to pay the bill.”
