SINGAPORE, July 18 (Reuters) - Citigroup C.N and Singapore-based financial technology firm Ant International have launched a pilot program using artificial intelligence to help clients better manage foreign exchange risk, the companies said on Friday.

The program combines Citi's Fixed FX Rates solution, which is widely used by the banks' clients in sectors such as e-commerce, with Ant International's Falcon Time-Series Transformer model, an AI forecasting tool that helps businesses reduce hedging FX costs, according to a joint statement.

The pilot program, developed initially for aviation clients, has already been used in live transactions with a major Asian airline able to reduce cost in its fixed FX hedging for online ticket sales, the companies said.

"The 30% hedging cost savings Ant International has achieved for the pilot airline customer shows the cost efficiency that can be achieved with AI-enabled FX hedging," Kelvin Li, general manager of Platform Tech at Ant International, said.

"We are excited to expand the solution with Citi to serve more businesses and industries," he added.

Ant International is an affiliate of China's fin tech giant Ant Group, founded by billionaire Jack Ma. It provides global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology and has operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America.

The launch came six months after Citi began rolling out new AI tools to be used by employees in eight countries, providing such access to 140,000 employees globally.

Large banks have been using AI tools in more targeted ways. Morgan Stanley MS.N has a chatbot that helps financial advisors in interactions with clients, and Bank of America's virtual assistant Erica focuses on day-to-day transactions of retail clients.

(Reporting by Yantoultra Ngui in Singapore and Selena Li in Hong Kong; Editing by Shri Navaratnam)

((Yantoultra.Ngui@thomsonreuters.com;))