Stop Asking AI Chatbots for Financial Advice. They’re Terrible At It.

Depending on who you ask and how inherently lazy they are, artificial intelligence has mastered every pursuit imaginable, from writing erotic Sonic the Hedgehog fanfic to passing the bar exam.

Whatever you use it for, one thing you absolutely should not use it for is advice on your personal finances. It will likely give you some remarkably bad tips that might end up ruining you.

According to a new study from the Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence, researchers tossed 12 finance questions at four of the biggest chatbots: ChatGPT-4o, DeepSeek-V2, Elon’s Grok 3 Beta, and Google’s Gemini 2. The results were clear—the chatbots fumbled the bag.

ChatGPT came out on top with a score of only 5 out of 12. On the opposite end of the scale was Google’s Gemini, which limped across the finish line with a miserable 1.5.

AI Chatbots Are Really Bad At Dishing Out Financial Advice—Shocker

According to the researchers, when it comes to financial advice, you shouldn’t listen to the chatbots on pretty much any topic at all. They seem to have gotten everything wrong, including basic mathematics.

Grok tried to add $3,700 and $200 and somehow landed at $4,900. Most responses were wordy and typo-ridden, but, as seems to be a running theme in society today, it was all delivered with an unearned confidence that seems to be a signature of the modern tech bro who can’t help but put their own unearned confidence into the chatbots they’ve built.

They all doled out financial advice with the supreme arrogance of the guide who corners you at a party to explain why his bored ape NFT was a wise investment.

Mind Matters, a publication about “news and analysis at the intersection of artificial and natural intelligence,” writes that all the chatbots seem to have put more effort into coming off like relatable humans rather than providing good, actionable financial advice culled from reliable sources.

The primary weapon in his holster, which he quickly draws whenever he wants to convince a reader of its humanity and confidence, is an exclamation point. Which they all seem to think is a suitable substitute for even a rudimentary understanding of basic financial advice.

Like oh so many of today’s most prominent grifters, ultimately, when it comes to financial advice, the chatbots just spit out a word salad that cannot be trusted. It’s not that the machines are smarter than us; it’s that we think they’re smarter than us, so we blindly trust them because they sound like they know what they’re talking about, even though they don’t have the slightest clue.

When it comes to financial advice, AI chatbots are dumb as hell, and yet people keep listening to them.