Jason Friedman truly believes in the power of generative AI to
But the
To combat that problem, Friedman's Virginia Beach-based fintech firm joined
Billed as a solution for crafting everything from social media posts to longform articles, the tool uses a large language model trained on the specifics and
Friedman says advisors who subscribe to AstroAI for $20 a month are provided with a unique URL to access the chatbot. Once logged in, users tell AstroAI what kind of content they want to write, specify a topic and begin creating.
"Advisors (tell us) they are using email automation or provided content automation. And they say, 'It's fine, but they do everything for me and when it comes out it looks the same as every other advisor. I want to put my own spin on it, but I don't know where to begin,'" Friedman said in an interview. "That spark is a problem that most content marketers have. What do I create today? What can I write about? And it's not an easy thing to figure out as an advisor."
But there's one thing that AstroAI doesn't handle: distribution. Advisory firms will still need to man the controls before anything generated by the tool is published, and Friedman says that is by design.
Much like an advisory firm would check the work of a third-party vendor who is contracted to handle marketing or content creation before sending it out to the masses, Friedman says an equally close eye should be kept on chatbots.
Without that level of attention, Friedman says generated AI content runs the risk of becoming as stale as the canned content he had at his disposal during his time as a financial advisor at Wells Fargo and Merrill Lynch.
And for an example of how mass produced, fully automated posts can cut even the most well-intentioned advisors off at the knees, look no further than July 4 and the
In a
Welp, the 12pm ET compliance approved 4th of July tweet got published 😐 pic.twitter.com/WCJAnUIdx8
— Bill Winterberg, CFP®️ (@BillWinterberg) July 4, 2023
Friedman said it was a painful moment to witness on the holiday because he knows those advisors likely had no idea that the canned content was scheduled to go out.
But intentions aside, the incident sends a message to clients and prospects that they have their engagement efforts on autopilot.
"I think what people look for in AI is just as much automation as possible. For example, if we're looking at sales, how much can AI automate? And instead of doing 100 custom sales messages a day, you can do a 1,000," Friedman said. "For content, it's the same thing. Do I post one great blog, or do I let AI write 20 blogs a day?
"In reality, there's that middle ground. It can automate, but you need to put in the work."
AstroAI hits the scene as a number of generative AI solutions targeting financial advisors and born from the mainstream AI boom that began late last year finally come to market.
In late June, former Skience president and CEO
Butler developed the Wealth Management GPT pilot with a group of technologists during the spring. His team started with one scenario and eventually built out nine other templates to round out the pilot's offerings. As of mid-July, about 100 people were involved with the pilot.
This week also saw
"Our AI-powered email builder functions like a highly energized professional writer, marketer and designer, minus the accompanying overhead," Angel Gonzalez, Snappy Kraken's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "This is especially noteworthy as our data indicates that emails constitute the most reliable and significant source of traffic for advisors."
But with all this new capability making its way into the world of financial services, Billy Leigh, managing director and senior vice president of strategy and transformation at
In an
"Ultimately, ChatGPT can help teams improve, not replace them, and that's a critical distinction that too often gets buried in the hype," he writes. "The real question CFOs should be asking is how they can use generative AI tools to create new value, either by freeing up time for team members, generating deeper insights, or both."
Leigh's stance and push for a hands-on approach reflects much of what Friedman has to say about the power of generative AI to supercharge financial advice — chiefly, that humans need to lead the way so the buzzy tech can truly flourish.
"I think it's vastly important, because you have to create something that's unique to your own brand. So if you're going to use AI to help you create content and you're just going to publish whatever that tells you, it's going to look the same and feel the same as any other advisor who is asking it a similar question," Friedman said. "You have to have a personal touch to it, so we're never going to stray away from that."
He adds that because our increased access to generative AI tools is still in the early stages, human collaboration and a sharing of successes is the only way to make the most of it.
"Because it is so new, it was almost like going into something with a blindfold on because there was nothing out there that really was that helpful in terms of resources," Friedman said of AstroAI's development, which began in mid-May. "And it was, and still is, a lot of testing. A lot of trial and error. We had to work together and try a lot of things and see what worked the best for advisors."
