Survey finds more people using AI chatbots for money decisions

In short: More consumers are using AI chatbots to help with saving and investing, but experts and regulators say people should not treat the answers as official financial advice.

What's going on

New research from consultancy EY suggests AI is becoming a common tool for personal finance. In a survey of 18,000 people across 23 countries, 49 percent said they used AI in the past six months to support savings or investment decisions.

Younger adults are leading this shift. EY found 68 percent of Gen Z respondents and 65 percent of millennials used AI for some form of financial management. This often means asking a chatbot questions the way you might ask a person, like “How should I split my money between savings and investing?” (a chatbot is a text-based tool that replies in conversation).

In the UK, EY said 35 percent of about 1,000 consumers surveyed used AI to support savings and investment decisions in the past six months. Another UK study, commissioned by Lloyds Banking Group last year, found ChatGPT was the most popular AI tool for money questions, followed by Google’s Gemini.

What to watch

Regulators are paying attention. The UK Financial Conduct Authority has started a review of how AI might affect everyday investors, and it warned that general-purpose tools like ChatGPT are not regulated for financial advice. That matters because if an AI answer is wrong, it is not covered by the usual complaint and compensation systems.

Experts also say how you ask questions can change the quality of the response, like getting different answers depending on how you phrase a question to a friend. Several advisers recommend using AI as a helper for summaries and basic calculations, then checking the facts with trusted sources before acting.

Source: Financial Times