Citi is starting a new AI training program aimed at teaching hundreds of thousands of employees how to write better prompts to feed the bank’s generative AI programs.
A Citi representative told Fortune confirmed that the training is meant to improve AI prompting among its workforce.
Citi reported widespread employee engagement with AI technology in the memo, saying so far this year, employees have entered more than 6.5 million prompts in its built-in tools.
“Just as the right question in a client pitch can reveal clarity and create advantage, a well-crafted prompt can accelerate your work, surface insights and amplify your impact,” Ryan and Selva said in the company memo, according to American Banker.
Experts tell Fortune the democratization of AI skills among workers is a major cultural shift in banking and other white-collar industries.
“People may wonder if they will become expendable,” Christina Muller, workplace mental health expert and consultant at R3 Continuum, a national HR and workplace behavioral health agency, told Fortune. “Training is crucial to reinforce that AI is meant to be a co-pilot—not a replacement—on an already flying plane.”
Citi’s widescale adoption of AI is “turning work that once took hours into tasks done in minutes,” the internal memo said. “The scale isn’t just impressive; it marks the beginning of a new way of working.”
Mandating AI training is a useful starting point, but by itself, it won’t create meaningful results in the financial industry, Gary Lamach, SVP of strategy and growth at ELB Learning, a company that provides businesses with software professional services, told Fortune.
“Too many organizations are treating AI as a box to check, launching a tool or rolling out a one-time training, and calling it transformation,” Lamach added. “That’s when implementation fails.”
Citi’s mandatory AI prompt training is part of a “continuous upskilling process we’re offering all employees,” Citi’s Fox said. The company is offering additional training for employees to learn more about AI in general.
Many of Citi’s competitors have already been banking on AI training investments.
But Lamach said the technologies are as good as the people that steer them. Continued investment in people is what separates businesses with AI implementation on a checklist and companies that will guide their employees in the new reality of work, he added.
“The future of finance will not be defined by the tools themselves, but by the leaders who empower their people to use them with purpose,” Lamach said.
