HSBC has teamed up with legal chatbot Harvey AI as it continues to leverage AI across the bank.

The strategic partnership will see the London-based banking group pilot the legal AI platform in its global legal department.

Founded by Winston Weinberg and Gabriel Pereyra in 2022, Harvey AI is an AI platform designed specifically to cater to the needs of professionals working in legal and professional services.

Functioning as a large language model, it can provide answers to user-inputted questions, analyse text and perform tasks across areas such as contracts, due diligence, compliance, tax and litigation.

It draws its knowledge from a database of over 250 international legal sources and partnerships with organisations like LexisNexis. To protect customer privacy, Harvey doesn’t rely on user data to train its underlying AI models.

Bob Hoyt, chief legal officer at HSBC Group, described the bank’s decision to partner with Harvey AI as a “significant step forward” in how it approaches legal matters.

He said that the combination of AI’s “speed and efficiency” and the “expertise and judgment” of HSBC’s human lawyers will reimagine its legal capabilities.

Hoyt continued: “It is an investment in a future where our lawyers can spend more time on strategic, high-value work to benefit our business colleagues and the customers they serve.”

As of today, over 74,000 lawyers and 700 law firms and enterprises use Harvey AI’s legal chatbot. Notable customers include Pwc, T-Mobile, Comcast, Procter & Gamble, Thompson Hine, A&O Shearman, Dentons and S&A Law Offices.

On HSBC becoming its latest major customer, Harvey AI co-founder and chief executive Winston Weinberg said it’s clear the bank is emerging into an “AI fluent organisation”.

He added: “As part of this ambition, the Legal team is moving towards a more AI-enabled operating model that will help them deliver for the business – and by extension their customers – by becoming more data-driven, efficient and effective.”

Towards the end of last year, HSBC announced a new multi-year partnership with Mistral AI to accelerate the use of genAI across the bank.

The partnership gives HSBC access to the French AI company’s commercial models, including future developments, with applied AI, science and engineering teams across both businesses working together to develop new genAI tools for the organisation.

HSBC said at the time that future areas of focus for the bank will include customer-facing innovations, such as improvements to credit and lending processes, enhancing customer onboarding, and fraud and anti-money laundering checks.

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