On paper, SoGPT ticked a lot of boxes. Deployed as an internal assistant for Societe Generale employees, the tool was intended to help both the teams welcoming the public and those behind the scenes. These tailor-made assistants provided the group with control and governance of data. The bank had even created a dedicated entity, SocGen AI, to orchestrate the deployment of AI on a large scale.
SoGPT, a good idea… quickly outdated
In fact, enthusiasm quickly died down. According to BloombergSoGPT began to be decommissioned as early as the end of last year. Internally, criticisms piled up: the assistant was not evolving fast enough and already seemed to be lagging behind market solutions. While the major publishers were increasing the number of updates and new features, SoGPT was struggling to keep up. Result: the gap has widened, to the point of making the tool difficult to justify in the long term.
Rather than persist, Société Générale therefore opted for an existing solution: Copilot. The Microsoft tool should be deployed to the majority of the group’s employees in the coming weeks. A pragmatic choice, even if the bank did not wish to make an official comment.
This turnaround is not isolated. In the European banking sector, investments in AI are increasing, with the aim of productivity gains and, ultimately, a reorganization of certain professions. But adoption is still at a very early stage. Establishments are focusing on getting the tools and skills in place first, with the savings coming… later.
Above all, the market has matured a lot in a short time. In 2024, companies were still hesitating between developing their own solutions and purchasing existing tools. The following year, the balance clearly tipped in favor of “ready-to-use”: almost three quarters of AI use cases in production now rely on external solutions. The reasons are quite mundane: high costs of internal developments, complexity of large-scale operation, sometimes laborious integration with existing systems, and an evolution of models so rapid that it becomes complicated to keep up the pace alone.
Implicitly, the abandonment of SoGPT is a reminder that designing competitive generative AI and maintaining it at market standards is a demanding exercise, even for a large banking group. Sometimes, the simplest thing is to let those whose job it is do it.
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