Using a novel measure of investment companies’ reliance on generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), we document a sharp increase in GenAI usage by hedge funds after ChatGPT’s 2022 launch. A difference-in-differences test shows that hedge funds adopting GenAI earn 2-4% higher annualized abnormal returns than nonadopters, while non-hedge funds do not benefit. The outperformance originates from funds’ AI talent and ChatGPT’s strength in analyzing firm-specific information. We conduct a new survey of fund managers’ GenAI usage to provide direct validation of our measure and offer additional new insights on how managers adopt GenAI tools in their practice.

We provide large-scale evidence on the occurrence and value of FinTech innovation. Using data on patent filings from 2003 to 2017, we apply machine learning to identify and classify innovations by their underlying technologies. We find that most FinTech innovations yield substantial value to innovators, with blockchain being particularly valuable. For the overall financial sector, internet of things (IoT), robo-advising, and blockchain are the most valuable innovation types. Innovations affect financial industries more negatively when they involve disruptive technologies from nonfinancial startups, but market leaders that invest heavily in their own innovation can avoid much of the negative value effect.ReceivedMay 31, 2017; editorial decision September 30, 2018 by Editor Andrew Karolyi.

Growing AI readership (proxied for by machine downloads and ownership by AI-equipped investors) motivates firms to prepare filings friendlier to machine processing and to mitigate linguistic tones that are unfavorably perceived by algorithms. Loughran and McDonald (2011) and BERT available since 2018 serve as event studies supporting attribution of the decrease in the measured negative sentiment to increased machine readership. This relationship is stronger among firms with higher benefits to (e.g., external financing needs) or lower cost (e.g., litigation risk) of sentiment management. This is the first study exploring the feedback effect on corporate disclosure in response to technology.