If you thought Google was done stuffing its AI technology into everything it owns (and a few things it doesn’t), you were dreaming. Google Finance, a web-based app for folks who saw The Wolf of Wall Street as a shining example of good behaviour, and reckon The Big Short and Moneyball are all about the spreadsheets (seriously, those are all great movies), is about to experience its own AI overhaul.
Google intends to give Finance users access to AI features when making financial decisions, with a dedicated chatbot available to answer queries that they might have about where to spend their money (and why). How this’ll work in practice… well, we’re about to see.
Google Finance advice
The upcoming Google Finance features do sound handy on paper. Handing over financial advice and advanced questions to an AI sounds a bit like having your very own quant in your computer, while more advanced visual representations of the finance market would also be handy. A revamped real-time news feed is less impressive, since most financial news tends to be immediate, even if you haven’t Jim Hensoned Gemini up its backside to create a stock analyst Muppet.
Google Finance’s chatbot is the star of the show. The search giant explains that users “can ask detailed questions about the financial world and get a comprehensive AI response, all with easy access to relevant sites on the web.” The benefits include moving beyond just hunting for individual stock updates. Similarly, the visualisation tools let users “view technical indicators, like moving average envelopes, or adjust the display to see candlestick charts and more.”
AI hallucinations are a thing, and folks who are serious about their money may not want to trust choices to technology that might make things up. Go figure. For those users, Google Finance will retain a toggle that lets them revert to the original version of the web app. For every other user, prepare to be counted among Gemini’s daily active users. The change rolls out to American users in the next few weeks. International access isn’t confirmed yet.
