Tyson’s concerns are pointed. While he acknowledges AI’s usefulness as a business tool, he said the volume of inaccurate information being circulated – and absorbed by clients – is getting worse.
“The level of misinformation that is out there is quite frightening now for people,” he said. “It’s getting worse, if I’m honest.”
Tyson gave a direct example. A client had been told by an AI tool that they did not need to pay stamp duty. “I checked it myself and it came up, and I was like, ‘What? You do’. There are little things like that that I think misinformation is causing a lot of young first-time buyers to go, ‘I could do this, do that’. But I have tell them, ‘You can’t, because of X, Y and Z’.”
The problem, as Tyson sees it, is that access to information has outpaced access to accurate information. “People come and say, ‘Oh, I was told I can do this’. Again, I have to tell them, ‘No, you can’t’. I speak to fellow advisers and they’re just like, ‘This is just bonkers’.”
Tyson also pointed to the FCA, noting that despite its stated commitment to consumer fairness, he had yet to see meaningful action on the spread of financial misinformation online. “Considering the FCA is all about fairness and so on, I’ve yet to see them actually move and do much, if I’m honest.”