Key Takeaways:

• UP Fintech has unveiled its TigerGPT investment aide, which will help its customers consider the huge amounts of publicly available data when picking stocks
• The company joins other Chinese tech names like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent in releasing their own customized chatbots, following the huge attention to OpenAI’s ChatGPT

By Shirley Lau

ChatGPT may have the edge when it comes to general knowledge. But China’s UP Fintech (NASDAQ:TIGR) thinks it has a leg up on the global chatbot sensation when it comes to investing. And that could mean big money for stock buyers who would be the main users for TigerGPT, which UP Fintech officially announced last week.

But UP Fintech’s new chatbot will only be able to do so much, and will stop short of offering actual stock picks. That’s probably just as well, since only a tiny fraction of the thousands of analysts, fund managers and other advisors can consistently pick stocks that outperform the broader market.

ChatGPT has become a global sensation these past few months, even though the AI-powered chatbot developed by U.S.-based OpenAI is out of reach in China. Its huge popularity has spurred a flurry of Chinese firms to accelerate the launch of their own alternative products that can provide answers to almost everything within seconds, and even write poems and news reports.

Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Tencent (0700.HK) and JD.com (NASDAQ:JD) have all joined the chatbot race with new announcements over the last two months, as have smaller players like iFlytek (002230.SZ) and NetEase (NASDAQ:NTES).

But UP Fintech, best known for its Tiger Brokers stock-trading app, hopes to outshine the competition with its TigerGPT AI-powered investment assistant, which is still under testing and training. UP Fintech says the chatbot will be able to absorb the latest market information, and is touting the virtual tool as the industry’s first AI investment helper.

UP Fintech’s shares traded up 6.2% the day of the announcement last week, as investors looked forward to the chance to make some extra money from the chatbot. But the stock gave back all those gains and more in the next few days as the excitement quickly wore off.

Unlike ChatGPT, which is a general-purpose chatbot, TigerGPT specializes in the investment realm, with a view to “providing intelligent global investment decision-making support for users,” UP Fintech said. It will tap into UP Fintech’s vast content library and other online resources such as research to answer investor queries. With just simple questions, users will be able to access over 10,000 listed company profiles, earnings and corporate actions.

UP Fintech claimed TigerGPT was the first AI investment helper, though we discovered what look like rivals in products like Wealthfront and SigFig, both from the U.S. And just a day after UP Fintech’s announcement, Singapore’s online brokerage Long Bridge Securities launched its own PortAI, an integrated financial intelligence assistant based on OpenAI’s GPT technology.

All that shows that AI could be an especially valuable tool for investors, and could quickly become an important differentiator for online brokers who can offer the smartest products.

First In China

Financially, UP Fintech seems to be in good shape. Despite global macroeconomic uncertainty, it logged total revenue of $225.4 million last year, including a year-on-year 15.2% rise in fourth-quarter revenue to $63.85 million.

While the announcement of TigerGPT had limited impact on UP Fintech’s stock, it’s still possible the shares could get a boost if the product wows investors at its actual launch. A comparable – and perhaps cautionary – parallel example on the perils of overhyping such new technology can be found in Baidu’s recent launch of its own Ernie Bot.

For investors, a key question will be to what extent TigerGPT can help them pick winning stocks. The answer may take some time to determine, based on the performance of stocks that investors decide to buy using information they get from the chatbot. And at the end of the day, investors will still need to make the final decision on whether to buy, since the chatbot won’t make actual stock picks.

AI can also consider other less obvious factors that could affect a stock, such as geopolitical events and new industry developments, without being influenced by emotions or personal biases. All this can help investors reduce their risk exposure, optimize investment strategy and make more informed decisions, which should ultimately improve their chances for higher returns.

But as with all forms of technology, AI chatbots are likely to have their limitations, at least in the short-term, such as inability to provide highly personalized investment advice. Accordingly, potential users of TigerGPT should manage their expectations. And stock brokers probably don’t have to worry about losing their job – at least not just yet.