BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Generative artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming integral to how retail investors research companies, with nearly half of those surveyed saying they have used it to process financial information or inform investment decisions.
Joe Croom , assistant professor of accounting at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business , and his co-authors analyzed more than 410,000 investor queries to a major brokerage’s GenAI chatbot and surveyed nearly 2,200 investors.
“Investors most often use GenAI to help make sense of complex financial information and better understand what is driving market movements,” Croom said. “Investors initially use GenAI to help screen stocks and perform high-level company evaluations, but as their time with the tool grows, they shift toward more detailed monitoring and interpretation of specific firm news.”
Investors most frequently use GenAI as a research assistant. While some investors may turn to GenAI for advice, perhaps asking, “What stock should I buy,” many ask more nuanced questions such as, “How healthy are this company’s profit margins?” GenAI’s central role is making large volumes of financial information easier and faster to understand.
The findings appear in the article, “ Generative AI and Investor Processing of Financial Information ,” forthcoming in the Journal of Accounting and Economics. Other authors are Elizabeth Blankespoor , professor of accounting at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business, and Stephanie Grant , associate professor of accountancy at the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois.
In the analysis of activity between investors and the chatbot, many users appeared to experiment only briefly, but a substantial subset – 17.7% of users – adopted GenAI as a routine tool. “Almost half of investors have used GenAI, and nearly a fifth of those use it routinely. However, our data were collected in 2024, and we expect those numbers are higher today and still climbing,” Croom said.
Sixty-five percent of investors surveyed cited GenAI’s capacity to speed up the processing of information, while 59% highlighted its simplified processing of complex data.
Among investors who have used GenAI, 74% said they believe it improves processing and 80% planned to continue using it in the future.
But investors also identified limitations of GenAI for investing tasks, such as concerns about its reliability and accuracy (54%), data privacy (50%) and response quality (46%).
Non-users were more skeptical about future adoption of GenAI, with more than half uncertain about it improving processing (55%). However, only 24% said they were unlikely to use it, suggesting future adoption is likely to grow among this group.
While the research shows that GenAI already is actively used by retail investors, those who know the most about finance appear best positioned to take advantage of its more sophisticated capabilities.
While overall adoption of GenAI will likely increase, it also may widen the gap between more and less sophisticated investors. “Many people expect GenAI to democratize markets and empower less sophisticated investors. We find the opposite: the investors with the most financial experience and sophistication are the ones driving adoption and using GenAI most effectively,” Croom said.
“Our evidence of widespread adoption among retail investors has implications for regulators designing investor education and safeguards, and for managers disclosing to GenAI-using investors,” Croom said. “As more investors turn to GenAI, we need to keep learning how these tools reshape the way investors process and act on financial information — and what that means for capital markets.”
The research used data provided by Public, an investment brokerage and financial technology company with millions of active users.
Journal of Accounting and Economics
Survey
Not applicable
Generative AI and investor processing of financial information
18-Jun-2026