The news: ChatGPT has gained in popularity as a stock market adviser among Americans. According to a recent Motley Fool survey, 47% of U.S. adults have used ChatGPT for investment advice, and a significant majority would consider using it in the future.
What the numbers say: The survey found that younger generations, particularly Millennials (50%) and Gen Zers (53%), are more likely to use ChatGPT for stock recommendations compared to Baby Boomers (25%). Higher-income individuals (77%) were more inclined to use the chatbot for investment advice than middle-income (43%) and low-income (23%) individuals. There were also gender differences, with 41% of women using ChatGPT for investing compared to 55% of men.
The big picture: AI has the potential to significantly upend the finance industry. A new study out of the University of Florida found that ChatGPT, after being trained on recent news headlines, used sentiment analysis to achieve returns of over 500%, while an S&P 500 ETF resulted in a -12% return during the same period.
Still: ChatGPT's training ended as late as September 2021, so its answers would not reflect the time period since then. Like other AI models, it has a tendency to make up information when it lacks answers, so investors would want to take a cautious approach when using the tool.
