Individual investors mostly  approve of financial advisors using AI in the form of large language models like GPT to provide better service, according to a snapshot survey by Morgan Stanley Wealth Management (MSWM).

The survey, which had five questions, followed on the mid-March reveal that MSWM had a special relationship with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and had already harnessed the technology around the universe of MSWM documents and publications for an internal version of GPT-4.

The first three questions focused on perceptions that this technology could be a boon for the finance industry, and the survey found that 72% of respondents either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that AI could be a game changer for investors and traders.

Another 74% either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that financial advisors will be better able to serve their clients if they use this kind of artificial intelligence. And finally, 63% either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that they would be interested in using a brokerage or investment advisor that included AI over one that didn’t.

Two other questions had to do with how the technology might fit in the advisor-client relationship. Here, 82% either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that AI will never fully take the place of human advice and guidance, and 88% either somewhat agreed or strongly agreed that have a trusted human as their financial advisor was very important to them.

Looking at the age breakdown, investors 35 to 44 were the most enthusiastic in their perceptions about the transformative nature of the new technology, by 15 percentage points or more over older investors. But when it came to the human touch, all age groups valued these aspects of the advisory relationship fairly evenly.

The survey was fielded and administered by Dynata, a global marketing and analytics company. The online sample of 924 investors in the U.S. who were either self-directed or delegated all of their investments to an advisor, or both, was polled from April 3 to April 20. One third had investible assets of less than $500,000, one third between $500,000 and $1 million, and one third more than $1 million.

In addition, the gender breakdown of participants was 60% male and 40% female, and they considered themselves as having moderate-plus experience as investors and represented an even distribution across regions and age bands.