Morgan Stanley is planning to use OpenAI’s GPT-4 platform internally as a chatbot assistant for its financial advisers.

GPT-4, a large multimodal model that accepts image and text inputs to create humanlike outputs, is being used at Morgan Stanley to answer questions for financial advisers so they can better serve clients, Jeff McMillan, head of analytics, data and innovation for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, told Bank Automation News.

“The work we are doing with [OpenAI] will allow us to bring our expansive intellectual capital into the hands of our financial advisers in seconds. It will be like having our chief investment strategist, chief global economist and global equities strategist on call for every financial advisor 24/7,” he said.

The $1.1 trillion financial institution’s internal chatbot, powered by GPT-4, is able to answer questions and process large amounts of data, McMillan said. Unlike ChatGPT, the internal bot was “designed specifically for and by Morgan Stanley with appropriate controls.”

For example, the chatbot can answer the following questions:

• What is Morgan Stanley’s chief investment strategist’s outlook for the S&P 500 and why?
• What are Morgan Stanley’s rates on CDs and what are some alternative products available to my clients who are seeking yield?
• Tell me the top-rated technology stocks by our research departments and compare and contrast the risk and reward for each.

The chatbot, which is in beta with advisers, has already been trained with roughly 300 financial advisers and employees, who offered feedback in real time on the quality of the bot’s answers. The solution is expected to roll out in late spring or early summer, “subject to appropriate controls,” McMillan said.

Banks continue to look to AI-driven chatbots as internal resources. For example, Michigan State University Federal Credit Union launched its internal bot Gene in 2021. Gene answers questions regarding loan application information, compliance updates and internal changes of importance to employees.

As Morgan Stanley rolls out the internal bot, the financial institution is also considering additional uses for OpenAI technology, McMillan said. “It is very early days on other use cases, and we are still evaluating OpenAI products’ potential.”