Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted that artificial intelligence could help financial services in a keynote address at a conference last week on artificial intelligence and financial stability. However, she also warned of significant risks to the industry.

"As I know many of you here today recognize, AI offers tremendous opportunities for the financial system," Yellen said. "And if we define AI broadly, the financial services sector has already been capitalizing on these opportunities. For many years, the predictive capabilities of AI have supported forecasting and portfolio management. AI's ability to detect anomalies has contributed to efforts to combat fraud and illicit finance. Many customer support services have been automated. Across these and many other use cases, we've seen that AI, when used appropriately, can improve efficiency, accuracy, and access to financial products."

She went on to note how "AI's rapid evolution could mean additional use cases." Those include using natural language processing, image recognition, and generative AI "to make financial services less costly and easier to access."