AI Content In Finance Websites

Money makes the world go round, and financial literacy is the grease that keeps the wheels spinning. From your first penny earned to planning your retirement fund, managing and investing your money is a fundamental part of life for all. Whether it’s large corporate entities or the average joe, everyone can find advice for anything. People look for advice on investing, which credit card to choose, or how to plan a simple budget. With technology constantly changing, people no longer need to get financial advice in-person - they can find what they are looking for with a quick Google search. But how often is the advice given coming from a seasoned financial professional and how often is it generated by AI? 

For this study we decided to focus on high-performing pages from high-traffic financial websites (YMYL). We analyzed articles, posts, and guides from various financial websites and used our AI detector, Originality.AI, to examine the review text within the articles to find out how many were suspected to be generated by humans or AI.

Summary of Key Findings

• A large percentage of suspected AI content was observed in sites such as GoBankingRates, Investopedia, Bankrate, CreditKarma, Nerdwallet, and ThePointsGuy.

• Suspected AI content was present but accounts for less than 50% of the dataset in sites such as Investorplace, SmartAsset, ThePennyHoarder, and Kiplinger. 

• On average, the year with the lowest amount of suspected AI content is 2021. On the other hand, on average the year with the highest amount of suspected AI content is 2023. Investopedia has the highest average score per year of suspected AI content, while Kiplinger has the lowest average score per year. 

• When distributing the articles into specific categories, Finance Management accounts for the majority with 36.8% of the dataset.

• Overall, we notice an upwards trend in suspected AI content within financial advice websites in most of the sites tested, with an increase in 2023 and largely within the financial management categories. 

Study Method and Data:

• We ran Originality.AI’s detector on over 6,000 articles from 10 finance websites. 
• We chose only articles published from 2020 onwards for our study. 
• Due to limited options the amount of articles per site ranges from 452 to 779
• No articles from 2021 were collected from InvestorPlace
• No articles from 2020 were collected from the following: BankRate, CreditKarma, GoBankingRates, Investopedia, and Kiplinger
• 11% of Bankrates suspected AI articles have disclaimers stating the use of LLMs to write the articles with human reviews 
• Due to a large amount of genres within the finance world we have compiled them into the following categories:

              -> Finance Management: Personal Finance/Banking/Loans/Credit

            -> Information and Education: Guide/Reviews/Advice/Economics

            -> Business and Financial Services: Corporate/Small Business/Insurance/Home/Auto

               -> Investment and Planning: Investing/Retirement/Taxes

               -> Miscellaneous: All other categories

Top 10 Financial Websites with Suspected AI Content

For this portion we only examined the total percentage of articles with an AI Score of 0.5 or higher over the years 2020-2024. In this we notice the following:

• Sites with suspected AI Detected content accounting for over 60% of their total dataset include GoBankingRates,Investopedia, and BankRate.

• Sites with suspected AI Detected content accounting for over 40% of their total dataset include.

CreditKarma,NerdWallet, and ThePointsGuy

• Sites with suspected AI Detected content accounting for over 20% of their total dataset include.

InvestorPlace, SmartAsset, and ThePennyHoarder‍

• Only 1 site has less than 20% of suspected AI content in their total dataset, this being Kiplinger where only 8.8% of their dataset has an AI Score of 0.5 or higher.

Distribution of Suspected AI Content 2021-2024

For this portion we only examined the years of 2021-2024 as no articles from 2020 were included for half of the dataset. The graph above shows the percentage of articles with an AI Score of 0.5 or higher in comparison to the total number of articles per year in each site's dataset.

Note: No articles were collected from the year 2021 for InvestorPlace

In this, we notice the following:

1. On average the year with the lowest amount of suspected AI Detected content is 2021. 
2. On average the year with the highest amount of suspected AI Detected content is 2023.
3. Investopedia has the highest average score per year of suspected AI Detected content.
4. Kiplinger has the lowest average score per year of suspected AI Detected content. 
5. Suspected AI Detected content has shown a decrease in usage in both the sites NerdWallet and ThePointsGuy.
6. Suspected AI Detected content has shown an increase in usage within the sites BankRate, CreditKarma, GoBankingRates, Investopedia, ThePennyHoarder, and InvestorPlace
7. Both the sites Kiplinger and InvestorPlace have no AI content detected in the 2022 dataset. 

Categorical Distribution of Suspected AI Content

For this portion we only examined rows in which the articles were given an AI Score of 0.5 or higher to best see the distribution of categories of suspected AI Content. 

In this we notice the following:

1. Finance Management accounts for the majority with 36.8% of the dataset.
2. Investment and Planning account for 21.8% of the dataset
3. Business and Financial Services account for 19.2% of the dataset
4. Information and Education account for 13.5% of the dataset.
5. Miscellaneous Categories account for 8.8% of the dataset 

Conclusion

In conclusion, there is a lot of suspected AI being used to assist in or completely write the financial advice we find online. This can be expected as with the growth of technology so comes the growth of artificial intelligence within our daily lives that can impact society both positively and negatively. The importance of AI being or not being used to create the advice is dependent on each individual member of the article's respective audience. To some - it matters, to others - it does not. For those who only want personalized guidance from a human expert, Originality.AI can help empower readers to make informed choices based on their own preferences.