There’s a new Chase commercial making the rounds, and it’s doing something smarter than it looks like it’s doing.
The setup: a guy has a miserable, automated morning. His smart speaker won’t turn on the lights. His self-driving car pulls up with nobody in it. A robot barista gets his coffee wrong. He’s not furious about any of it — just quietly worn down, the way you get when everything around you is technically functional and completely indifferent to you. Then he walks into a Chase branch, and someone greets him like he’s a person. It’s scored to a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” It’s genuinely affecting.
Here’s the part that makes it interesting instead of just sweet: Chase is one of the most aggressive adopters of AI in banking. Fraud detection, call routing, loan underwriting, the whole back office — automated wherever it can be. This is a company that has spent years pulling humans out of the transaction. And they’re the ones airing an ad about how good it feels to talk to a human.
