Best AI for AdvisorsWhat is an AI website chatbot?
Short answer
A chat window on a firm's website that uses AI to answer visitors' questions, book meetings or collect contact details.
Definition
An AI website chatbot answers visitors in a chat box on your site. It might explain your services, answer common questions, book a meeting or take a message. Many use a language model guided by instructions and your website content.
It's a public-facing tool, so it speaks for your firm.
Why it matters for advisors
What the chatbot says is a communication from your firm. FINRA's advertising FAQs address supervising chatbot communications, and the Marketing Rule applies to advisers' advertisements. The chatbot shouldn't give individualized advice, make performance claims or promise outcomes.
Chat logs may be records you need to keep, and if visitors share personal information the vendor becomes a service provider for that data.
Before you turn one on, decide where its conversations are stored and who reviews them. A chatbot that answers prospect questions on your site is producing communications, and you'll want to be able to show what it said if a question comes up later.
Example
A firm sets its chatbot to answer only from its services page and FAQs, route account questions to a phone number, and send every transcript to its archive.
Watch out for
Test it like a skeptical visitor would. Ask it for stock picks, performance numbers and guarantees, and see what it says.
Related terms
- System promptStanding instructions that shape every answer an AI tool gives, set by the vendor, the firm or the user.
- Prompt injectionAn attack where hidden or malicious instructions in text, files or web pages trick an AI tool into ignoring its rules or leaking data.
- SEC Marketing RuleRule 206(4)-1 under the Advisers Act, which governs investment adviser advertisements, including AI-written ones.
- FINRA Rule 2210FINRA's rule on broker-dealer communications with the public, which applies whether a person or an AI tool wrote the content.
- Books and records ruleRule 204-2 under the Advisers Act, which lists the records SEC-registered advisers must keep, including certain communications.
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