Visa, which is considered one of the largest payment platforms globally, is taking a close look at AI as it plans to set up new funds to invest in generative AI ventures.
On October 2, 2023, Visa announced a new $100 million generative AI initiative to invest in companies that are focused on developing generative AI technologies and applications that are related to commerce and payments.
Visa’s global corporate investment arm, Visa Ventures, will help track the $100 million investment. The arm has been supporting innovation in commerce and payments since 2007.
The work of generative AI is to produce different kinds of content, including imagery, text, audio, and synthetic data. Popular AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard use this to help their AI generate human-like writing.
According to the statement released on their website, Visa said,
- As a pioneer of AI in payments since 1993, Visa considers this initiative an extension of the company's leadership in AI use to drive innovation in payments, create value for partners and clients, and enable and empower global commerce. Generative AI is an emerging subset of AI that is built on Large Language Models (LLMs) to develop artificial general intelligence capable of generating text, images, or other content from large sets of existing data when given prompts. “While much of generative AI so far has been focused on tasks and content creation, this technology will soon not only reshape how we live and work, but it will also meaningfully change commerce in ways we need to understand,” said Jack Forestell, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Visa Inc.