A screen shows trading information for Morgan Stanley on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), January 19, 2022.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Morgan Stanley CNBC is expanding the use of OpenAI-powered generative artificial intelligence tools to its vaunted investment banking and trading division.
The company, which first rolled out an AI assistant based on OpenAI's ChatGPT technology to its wealth management advisors in early 2023, began testing another version called AskResearchGPT in its institutional securities group this summer, said Katy Huberty, the global research director of Morgan Stanley.
The tool allows users to pull answers from across the universe of Morgan Stanley's research – including across stocks, commodities, industry trends and regions – eliminating the otherwise cumbersome task of gathering insights from the more than 70,000 reports produced annually by the bank. are produced, collapses.
“We see it as a game changer from a productivity perspective, both for our research analysts and for our institutional securities colleagues,” Huberty said in an interview. The tool helps employees “access the highest quality and most insightful information as efficiently as possible.”
Since its arrival as a viral consumer app in late 2022, OpenAI's generative AI technology has been quickly adopted by Wall Street's biggest players.
Morgan Stanley says nearly half of its 80,000 employees use generative AI tools built with OpenAI, while JPMorgan ChaseAbout 60% of the company's 316,043 employees have access to a platform that uses OpenAI's models, a person with knowledge of the matter said. The San Francisco-based startup recently raised funding at a valuation of $157 billion.
At Morgan Stanley, a leader in investment banking and trading, along with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachsemployees have gravitated to AskResearchGPT and are using it instead of picking up the phone or sending an email to the research department, Huberty said.
Employees ask the tool three times as many questions as a previous tool based on traditional AI that has been in use since 2017, the bank said.
It is most in demand among salespeople and other client-facing staff, who often send research highlights and practice questions to hedge funds or other institutional investors, Huberty said.
“We found that it takes a salesperson one-tenth the time to respond to the average customer inquiry” using AskResearchGPT, she said.
In a recent demonstration, the GPT-4-based chatbot was able to distill Morgan Stanley's position on matters from Copper to Nvidia down to the finer points of setting up a data center, understanding industry-specific jargon, and providing charts and links to source material.
The bank wants to further drive adoption in light of the productivity gains it sees, Huberty said. The tool is embedded in employees' browsers and in Microsoft Teams and Outlook programs, so it is immediately available.
Understandably, Huberty says she is often asked whether AI could eventually replace the analysts who create the vast amount of research published under the Morgan Stanley banner.
“I don't see a way in the near future to just have the machine write the research report to generate the idea,” she said. “I really think it's people making the decision and owning the relationship, which is a really important part of being an analyst, or being in sales and trading work, or being an investment banker.”