One summer day in 2021, Chad Elley joined a Zoom meeting from his home desk in Atlanta, with his basement bar—and 100+ bottles of bourbon—as his background.

Elley was helping to build a brand-new AI banking assistant for Truist, the new bank formed in 2019 by the BB&T-SunTrust merger. At $66 billion, it was the biggest bank merger in a decade—and in parallel with the merger integration, Elley was part of a team of about 50 in business, design, and technology that had been working to shore up the new institution’s customer-facing AI tools.

“We learned quite a bit over the merger and looking at different channels that our clients were wanting to operate in,” Elley, who is SVP head of client enablement at Truist, told us, adding, “As we look at the younger, more millennial age of our clients and how they want to engage, a lot of times they don’t want to necessarily pick up the phone. So we knew that there was a channel that had to be created for that.”

Bottom line: BB&T and Suntrust had only ever offered simple chatbots, which operated via multiple-choice inquiry options for customers and automated responses tied to each.

Truist Assist is the new institution’s first-ever AI-enhanced virtual assistant, which uses natural language processing to answer 100+ potential customer questions ranging from account details to how to buy a home, and also passes off queries to one of Truist’s six contact centers.

Here’s the story of how the new bank’s new AI assistant came together.—HF

New month, new theme—that’s what we say here at Emerging Tech Brew. But before we move on, let’s review what we wrote last month for our cybersecurity theme.

• Oh, and if you find yourself lamenting the conclusion of our cybersecurity month and thinking, “This really should be the theme of the year,” then boy, oh boy, do we have a treat for you: IT Brew.

Now, back to the task at hand—click here to see the hub with all of our cybersecurity stories from September, or jump into individual articles below:

The smarter the city, the scarier the cyber risk. With more data and more datacenters, cities are at an increased risk of cyberattack, whether in the form of data breaches, ransomware, or malware attacks.

Tomorrow’s top trends in cybersecurity, according to VCs. Cyber insurance and anomaly detection are key investment areas, thanks to a spike in cyberattacks and a new hybrid workforce.

As John Deere digitizes, some experts worry about cyber risks. The recent jailbreak of a partially automated John Deere tractor underscored the potential risks of the company’s ongoing digital transformation.

Cars are now computers—and the auto industry’s cyber defenses may not be ready. As automakers develop smarter, more connected vehicles, the storied manufacturing companies face new technical challenges—including cybersecurity. Experts say the industry isn’t ready.

Looking ahead…This month we’re covering the intersection of tech and the financial services industry. Scroll back up in this newsletter to read the first piece, or, if that’s too much work, here’s the link again.

Last week, we asked if you’d take flight in a flying car eVTOL, if given the chance.

The results are in…and the vast majority of you are ready to jump into an air taxi ASAP. Our ~2,300 responses broke down like so:

• Nearly three-quarters (74%) said yes, they’d take a spin.
• About 15% said flat-out no.
• And the remaining 11% simply do not know how they’d react when asked about the chance to fly in an as-yet-unapproved-by-the-FAA aircraft. Which, fair.

Zoom out: As we wrote last week, many airlines are betting big on eVTOLs, but they’re not really looking for the tech to replace flights. Instead, the near-term commercial application that United and eVTOL startup Archer Aviation are cooking up is essentially replacing Uber rides to the airport with a quicker option. They claim at first it’ll be expensive and probably most appealing to business-class passengers, but over time it’ll be more like UberX than Uber Black.

Anyway, the chance to take a ride may come sooner than you think: Archer is targeting the end of 2024 for regulatory approval, and other eVTOL-makers are aiming for a similar timeline.

This week’s poll: Do you think Sony’s VR headsets (more on that in a sec) will ever be as popular as its consoles?

Yes
No
IDK

Stat: Sony is reportedly looking to pump out 2 million units of its second-gen VR headset by March 2023. Here’s a review of the forthcoming headset from last month.

Quote: “In 2025/2026...you’ll start to see parity [for EVs] on the supply side, in developed countries…At that stage, buying an internal combustion car will be a very bad idea because the original value of these cars will be nothing.”—Sylvain Filippi, managing director of Envision Racing, at a Reuters event

Read: What’s the best way to test Apple’s new crash-detection tech? Crashing cars, of course.

Seal the deal: After analyzing more than 176k sales calls (dang!), Gong compiled a list of phrasing that strengthens—or weakens—dealmaking. This glorious cheat sheet is called Words That Close—snag it for free here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• How one grocery chain used AI to slash food waste
• Why United Airlines is betting $1 billion on flying cars
• Cars are now computers—and the auto industry’s cyber defenses may not be ready