Why I don’t think ChatGPT should manage your investments

By Staci West on 5 June 2026 in Basics

In our house, ChatGPT has a name — Derek — courtesy of my husband.

Which means I regularly hear things like, “Derek helped me plan our holiday” or “Derek found a new recipe we should try.” It’s like Derek is our invisible roommate with strong opinions about dinner and contributes nothing to the household cleaning.

And I get it. AI is incredibly useful. Need help understanding a complicated topic? Great. Need a budget template? Perfect. Need help translating financial jargon into actual human language? Absolutely.

But lately more people are asking AI to do something else; they’re asking it what to do with their money. Recent research found that 40% of Britons are turning to unregulated guidance from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot*. Among younger generations, the numbers are even higher. A Finder survey found that 65% of Gen Z and 61% of millennials have used AI for help with their personal finances*.

At first glance, that might sound alarming. But honestly? It doesn’t surprise me. AI is fast, available 24/7 and doesn’t make you feel silly for asking questions. It doesn’t judge you for not understanding investing terminology or for feeling overwhelmed by financial decisions. In many ways, it’s filling a gap.

Why people are turning to AI in the first place

Before we criticise people for turning to AI, we should acknowledge why they’re doing it.

Access to financial guidance has become increasingly difficult for ordinary investors. Data from Schroders shows that over a six-year period, the proportion of advisers willing to work with clients holding less than £50,000 in investable assets fell from 52% to 25%*. Meanwhile, the proportion serving only clients with £200,000 or more nearly tripled.

That’s a problem.

Everyone deserves access to financial education, regardless of how much money they have. The growing popularity of AI tells us that people are actively looking for answers. They’re curious. They want to learn. They want investing to feel less intimidating. That’s a good thing. But while AI may help bridge the gap, it can’t replace financial literacy.

The confidence problem

One of the biggest risks with AI isn’t that it’s obviously wrong. It’s that it often sounds right. If you’re new to investing, it’s easy to mistake confidence for expertise. The chatbot explains diversification, risk, portfolio construction and asset allocation. You read it and think, “that sounds sensible.” But understanding the words isn’t the same as understanding the concepts.

Not because everyone needs to become an investment expert, but because everyone should feel confident enough to understand the basics and ask better questions.

The problem with asking Derek for investment advice

Let’s say you ask AI what funds you should invest in. You might get a perfectly reasonable answer. You might even get a better answer than that one relative who always has a “guaranteed winner” to tell you about at family gatherings.

It doesn’t know whether you’re investing for retirement, saving for a house deposit or building long-term wealth. It doesn’t know your financial circumstances, your goals or how comfortable you are with risk. Most importantly, it doesn’t know how you’ll react when markets inevitably wobble.

And that last point is the one I think people underestimate. Because investing isn’t just about information. It’s about behaviour.

The psychology nobody talks about

When people imagine investing, they tend to picture spreadsheets, charts and market forecasts. The reality is often much messier. Successful investing is frequently about managing your emotions.

• Can you stay invested when markets fall?
• Can you avoid making decisions based on scary headlines?
• Can you stick with a sensible long-term plan when everyone around you seems convinced the world is ending?

Those aren’t mathematical questions. They’re psychological ones.

Even if AI gives you a technically correct answer, it can’t help you navigate the emotional side of money. It can’t recognise your biases. It can’t understand your fears. It can’t stop you panic-selling during a market downturn because your portfolio suddenly feels uncomfortable.

This is where investing gets real. And it’s exactly why understanding your relationship with money matters just as much as understanding the markets themselves.

AI isn’t the problem

To be clear, I don’t think AI is the villain here. I use it. Millions of people use it. Derek gets mentioned in our house on a near-daily basis. We even use it at FundCalibre. Not to make investment decisions. But to make our work better, faster and clearer.

It can also help speed up the unglamorous but necessary parts of the process, such as grammar checks, structuring ideas, even generating early drafts of charts or summaries that we then refine and verify.

But, importantly, everything still goes through human judgement. Multiple times! Every stat is checked. Every interpretation is reviewed. Every conclusion is considered in context. AI makes the process faster. It does not make the thinking optional.

AI can be a fantastic tool for learning. Use it to explain jargon. Use it to simplify concepts. Use it to create a budget template. Use it to generate questions for a financial adviser. Use it to support your learning journey. Those are brilliant uses.

But there’s a huge difference between using AI as a teacher and using AI as a decision-maker. One builds confidence. The other creates dependence.

Financial literacy beats better prompts

The more I think about it, the less I believe the solution is learning how to ask AI better questions. The solution is learning enough about money and investing to know whether the answer makes sense in the first place. That’s exactly why we created Demystifying Investments.

And because investing is as much about behaviour as it is about knowledge, we also created Psychology of Money.

It’s one of my favourite projects because it explores something many people overlook: our financial decisions are rarely just financial. They’re emotional too.

Understanding money isn’t just about knowing what to do. It’s about understanding why you do it.

The rise of AI shows that people want guidance. They want clarity. They want investing to feel less overwhelming. The answer isn’t to stop asking questions. It’s to build the confidence to answer some of them yourself.

Derek is brilliant at finding holiday destinations and recommending recipes. But when it comes to your financial future, confidence, knowledge and self-awareness will always be more valuable than asking a chatbot what to do next.

*Source: SkyNews, 16 February 2026