Publications
Publications
- 2025
- HBS Working Paper Series
Generative AI Use by Capital Market Information Intermediaries: Evidence from Seeking Alpha
By: Mark Bradshaw, Chenyang Ma, Benjamin Yost and Yuan Zou
Abstract
We study the use of generative AI for firm-specific financial analysis on the Seeking Alpha platform. We find that, after the initial launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, the share of AI-generated articles rose sharply to 13.4% of all articles, then declined in late 2023 after Seeking Alpha equated the use of AI to plagiarism and announced a prohibition on its use. Compared to human articles, AI articles elicit smaller trading volume and abnormal return responses, suggesting they are less informative to capital market participants. However, authors who adopt AI exhibit increased productivity, publishing more articles and covering more new firms than non-adopters. Moreover, the expansion of AI coverage is associated with improved liquidity for historically undercovered firms, but provides no incremental benefit for firms that are already well-covered. Our findings suggest that while AI-generated articles are currently perceived as less informative than human-written articles, their comparatively low cost may enable broader coverage of, and capital market benefits for, firms traditionally overlooked by capital market intermediaries.
Keywords
Generative Ai; Seeking Alpha; Equity Research; Large Language Models; Gpt; AI and Machine Learning; Information Publishing; Financial Markets
Citation
Bradshaw, Mark, Chenyang Ma, Benjamin Yost, and Yuan Zou. "Generative AI Use by Capital Market Information Intermediaries: Evidence from Seeking Alpha." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 25-055, April 2025.