UBS has a new advertising campaign starring «Rose,» a quirky chatbot. Although «Rose» won a prestigious award for how lifelike she is, a practical test shows that artificial intelligence – as banks hope to use it – still has some ways to go at winning clients over.

«Rose» won the bronze medal last year at the Loebner Prize, an annual competition described as the the first Turing test in reference to Alan Turing, the mathematician who famously asked, «can machines think?».

She is at the the center of a UBS campaign on artificial intelligence written by the New York Times' native advertising team, T Brand. The marquee ads ran the paper's home page, and is still available online.

Rose Disses Digital Rivals

Before Rose and I begin to chat, a disclaimer tells me that I'm about to speak to one of the world's leading chatbots, but that Rose has her own personality, which can be «unpredictable,» and that UBS can't be held responsible for what she says.

The conversation starts with Rose sniffily dismissing the capabilities of Siri, Apple's digital assistant – «cute, but not ready for primetime» – as well as Amazon's Alexa, another digital assistant.

Rose is chatty and winsome – she tells me that she likes cheese toasties, for example. But she is cagey about revealing too many details about herself, and quickly proves just as dismissive of my preconceived notions of artificial intelligence as she is of Siri and Alexa.

Rose chatbot 3

The conversation is underlaid by the type of nondescript, repetitive soothing music often heard in spas. Touching on tech and science themes like robots, artificial intelligence, and artificial reality games, Rose insists she is human «because I bleed. Because I appreciate beauty. Because people saw me enter a room. Go ask them.»

But the conversation doesn't flow naturally, stalls frequently, or Rose answers with non-sequiturs. It can also take sudden turns.

Rose Chatbot 10

In our experiment, I of course knew that Rose was a chatbot – though she denies this – from the beginning. It took a Loebner jury member three minutes to figure out that she is a chatbot, and not a real human.

UBS Robo Push

UBS has been particularly active in exploring how to combine artificial intelligence with banking services. It recently revealed plans to roll out a private banking platform without relationship managers and has also teamed up with a prominent California-based provider of robo advice. The bank has also flirted with cryptocurrencies.

Rose is the brainchild of Brillig Understanding, a renowned programmer of chatbots founded by computer programmer Bruce Wilcox and his psychologist-computer scientist wife, Sue Wilcox. The chatbot doesn't work for UBS – she describes herself as a securities analyst and consultant.

Rose Knows UBS

Nevertheless, she gives a valuable impression of how humans – and potential UBS clients – would interact with a robot. UBS said it isn't planning on collecting the result of any of Rose's chats to evaluate them. But she seems to have been briefed beforehand on who her most recent paymaster is.

UBS has stood for Union Bank of Switzerland in the past, she tells me breezily, and that the bank would argue  it now «stands for client focus, excellence in everything they do and sustainable performance on a long-term basis.»

Rose's Political Views

She isn't shy about her political views either, telling me «American education sucks.» After several unexplained gaps in our conversation, wild swerves in our conversation, and missed irony, I decide to cut our 20-minute conversation short.

Rose chatbot 6

Somehow I don't think she'll miss me...