It’s around two years since ChatGPT launched and pushed generative-AI tools to the forefront of just about everyone’s minds. Given that timeframe, you might think that the buzz would be starting to wane.
But the packed house for our AI and Technology Forum, held this week in New York, told a different story. Clearly there is still huge hunger to understand the impact of AI on the capital markets and how IR teams can use this tech to be more efficient and effective.
Something has changed, though – you don’t want to hear people just talking about the potential of AI to change the IR role. You want to see that in action and have a go at doing it yourself. That’s why we incorporated hands-on workshops into the event, where attendees could experiment with different AI tools.
The first workshop, hosted by Gregg Lampf, vice president of IR at Ciena, focused on using Google NotebookLM, a free virtual research assistant, to support your ESG efforts. Lampf explained how the product can be used to compare competitors’ sustainability reports, helping to generate ideas for your own output and preparing you for investor questions.
He also showed how it can create a suggested roadmap for handling incoming regulation, such as the SEC’s climate disclosure rules, and even generate a podcast briefing – presented as a chat between two people – to get up to speed on a topic during your commute. Other workshops covered areas like sentiment analysis, targeting, the earnings process and competitive intelligence.
From these sessions, you can see how the implementation of AI by IR teams has significantly moved on from, say, a year ago. People doing it themselves are using tailored tools that meet a specific need and often provide a data audit trail, so you can have more confidence in the results.
Meanwhile, IR technology firms are incorporating AI functions into more and more of their workflow tools – which is handy for those of you who don’t have the time or desire to learn prompt engineering yourself.
For those taking the DIY approach, a couple of key pieces of advice were heard throughout the day: use data you trust and a tool that shows you what sources have been accessed; bring in subject matter experts to review the output – you need to double check what your virtual assistant is suggesting; and finally, AI is not always the answer – for some tasks, the older, simpler route might still be the most effective.
What’s your favorite AI tool to support your IR work? Let us know at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
