Artificial Intelligence OpenAI now wants ChatGPT to access your bank accounts

Your trust in AI is about to be put to the test: OpenAI will soon let you give the chatbot direct access to your bank accounts. The new feature announced in preview today will allow users to “securely connect” ChatGPT with Plaid — the bank-to-app bridging platform used by 12,000 financial institutions, including Schwab, Fidelity, Chase, Capital One, and more.

“More than 200 million people are already going to ChatGPT every month with finance questions – from budgeting to tips on how to cut back on spending,” OpenAI said in its announcement. “Now, users can securely connect their financial accounts with Plaid to get the full view of their financial picture in the context of their personal goals, lifestyle, and priorities that they’ve shared with ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI’s advanced reasoning capabilities.”

When financial accounts are connected, OpenAI says that ChatGPT users can view a dashboard that details their spending history, including any active subscriptions. Users can also ask it to help with financial decisions like buying a house or signing up for credit cards and flag any changes in spending habits.

This financial feature will be initially available to users in the US who subscribe to ChatGPT’s $200-per-month Pro tier. “We’ll learn and improve from early use before rolling it out to Plus, with the goal of making it available to everyone,” says OpenAI.

This is interesting, I don't think people should panic because this technology already exist. Banks are giving api for read-only access (called
PSD2 Open API) so anyone can make a 3rd party app that tracks transactions, balances etc. User must give access to their bank and you need to give access every 3months (at least in EU, not sure if it is the same in US).

I use the same api for my own private app I made for exactly this purpose (store all the data on my own server and database). The only potential risk is how the OpenAi will use this data (if it will use it at all), could it be for marketing, e.g. if your balance is above X treshold will you be getting ads (which they are introducing soon) for pricier items etc. But this is up to regulation of these Ai companies.