2.1. Financial Market Data Management
AI is a natural fit for the financial industry. Data is the essential input of AI, both analytical and generative AI, and can not be separated from a large number of data training [
6]. The financial industry has a high degree of digitalization. It has accumulated a lot of user and transaction data in daily business, making it one of the ideal scenarios for AI applications. Financial institutions also generally use AI technology to upgrade or innovate financial business. According to the Business Insider survey, 80% of banks in the United States believe that AI can help improve financial services and have or plan to integrate AI with financial business [
7,
8,
9]. By 2027, the global AI financial services market is expected to grow to
$130 billion.
Financial institutions mainly use analytical AI to assist human employees. The application scenarios are as follows:
1. Intelligent customer service. The work of customer service has prominent procedural characteristics, so it is one of the most widely used scenarios for AI Intelligent customer service mainly undertakes two tasks [
10]: First, answer customers’ questions and doubts. For example, Erica, the smart customer service of Bank of America, uses voice recognition and natural language processing technology to analyze customers’ problems, extract critical information, and provide corresponding solutions; Cimb’s Eva specifically addresses the needs of SMEs and can work 7*24 hours a day, playing a more significant role in helping SMEs during the epidemic. Ping An Bank of China’s AI customer service has undertaken 80% of the workload. Second, personalized business recommendations [
11]. For example, Wells Fargo cooperated with Google to analyze user characteristics based on transaction data, social data, etc., and recommend financial services or investment products in a targeted manner.
2. Credit score. Traditional credit scoring models primarily use structured data, which makes it impossible to score a customer if they do not have a bank account and the associated transaction transfers [
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17]. AI can widely use structured (such as transaction history) and unstructured data (such as employment history, spending habits, etc.) for credit scoring, significantly improving efficiency, accuracy, and reach. For example, the United Bank of the Philippines has built a credit scoring model based on artificial intelligence technology to give credit ratings to unbanked groups, thereby improving loan availability.
3. Smart Advisors [
18]. An intelligent advisory system built with AI technology can generate a portfolio suitable for investors’ needs by analyzing investors’ risk appetite, financial goals, and market conditions and adjusting investment strategies promptly according to market operation [
19]. This helps to lower the investment threshold and provide more precise investment choices for investors with different levels of wealth and risk tolerance. Some Chinese and foreign financial institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase in the US and Flush in China, have launched intelligent advisory services.
4. Risk management. Risk management models based on AI technology can analyze, identify, and predict risk factors in finance, investment, credit, and other fields through extensive data analysis and take measures to reduce risks and protect the interests of financial institutions and consumers [
20,
21,
22,
23,
24]. For example, Singapore’s DBS bank has used AI to improve its anti-money laundering/anti-terrorist financing alarm prioritization, significantly reducing the number of false positives. Some commercial banks in China have established AI anti-money laundering models, using machine learning, knowledge graphs, and other technologies for real-time monitoring and intelligent analysis of anti-money laundering.
2.2. Generative Artificial Intelligence (GAN) Technology
As a new type of production mode, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has the technical and economic characteristics of complementarity, intelligence, integration, and creativity [
25]. Artificial intelligence has penetrated financial products, business models, business processes, and other links, forming enabling effects, economies of scale, economies of scope, and flywheel effects, resulting in cost reduction, efficiency increase, value creation, and business format innovation. The deep integration of generative artificial intelligence and the financial industry is based on technology, with data as the core, computing power as the support, algorithm as the drive, and rules as the guarantee [
26]. It has some auxiliary value for financial business. Still, it is only possible to partially subvert the financial industry’s traditional paradigm. The application of generative artificial intelligence in the financial field faces many problems and challenges, and the interoperability between artificial intelligence technology and the financial sector should be strengthened.
1. Generate Adversarial Networks (Gans)
Generative Adversarial Networks (Gans) are one of the most popular research fields in machine learning in recent years. GAN was proposed by Ian Goodfellow and others in 2014. It uses a new training method to enable the generated model to learn the data distribution and create samples that are indistinguishable from the actual data. The core idea of GAN is to play games with two competing network models - Generator and Discriminator, and finally achieve the goal of generating realistic samples by generator [
27].
GANs consist of two independent adversarial networks: generator and discriminator. When only a noisy image array is used as input, the generator is trained to create realistic images. The discriminator is trained to classify whether an image is actual or not.
The true power of GANs comes from the adversarial training model they follow. The generator’s weight is learned based on the loss of the discriminator. As a result, the generator is trained by the images it generates, and it is difficult to know whether the generated images are real or fake. At the same time, the resulting pictures look more and more realistic, and the discriminator becomes more and more able to tell whether an image is actual or not, no matter how similar the image looks to the naked eye.
From the technical point of view, the discriminator’s loss is the error value of classifying the image as true or false. We’re measuring its ability to distinguish between real and fake photos. The generator’s loss will depend on its ability to “fool” the discriminator with the phony image, i.e., the discriminator only misclassifies the fake image because the generator wants the value to be as high as possible.
So, GANs build a feedback loop where the generator helps train the discriminator, and the discriminator helps train the generator. They get stronger at the same time. The chart below helps illustrate this point.
Figure 1.
Generate an adversarial network architecture diagram.
Figure 1.
Generate an adversarial network architecture diagram.
2. Variational Autoencoder (VAE)
Variations, or variations. What should we know about functionals before we talk about variations? Reviewing the functions we have learned since the beginning involves taking a given input value, x, through a series of changes, f(x), to get the output value y. Notice here that we’re putting a number in, and we’re putting a number out. Is there a case where our argument is a function instead of a number? [
28]. The classic question is, given two fixed points, A and B, we can take any path from point A to point B and find out in what path the shortest time from point A to point B is. Most people have the answer by this point - the shortest line between two points. A function where the input variable is a function and the output variable is a numerical value is called a function. The popular understanding of a function is a function of a function.
Usually, we feed the input image into the NN Encoder and get a latent code. Usually, the dimension of this latent code is much smaller than the dimension of the input object, which is a compact representation of the input object. Next, we feed this latent code into [
8] NN Decoder for decoding and outputting the reconstructed original object.
Figure 2.
Auto-Encoder architecture diagram.
Figure 2.
Auto-Encoder architecture diagram.
Auto-Encoder was proposed by Rumelhart in 1986 and can be used for processing high-dimensional complex data, promoting neural network development. A self-coding neural network is an unsupervised learning algorithm (training examples are not labeled) that uses the BP backpropagation algorithm and strives to make the output as close to the input as possible.
AE networks generally have two characteristics [
29]:
1. dim(Hidden layer) << dim(Input layer): the hidden layer dimension should be much smaller than the input dimension.
2. The Output of the decoding layer is used for Reconstruction Input, so we should minimize (Reconstruction error(Input, Output)), that is, minimize the reconstruction error between input and output.
VAE can be applied to data dimensionality reduction, feature extraction, and data visualization analysis in machine learning, and it can also be extended and applied to generative models.
As generative artificial intelligence technologies, generative adversarial networks (Gans) and variational autoencoders (VAE) are essential in financial market risk monitoring and management. By generating adversarial methods, Gans can synthesize high-quality financial data, help detect abnormal transactions and potential market manipulation, and improve the accuracy of risk monitoring [
30]. VAE, by learning the possible distribution of data, can generate realistic data samples that can be used to simulate different market scenarios, perform stress testing and risk assessment, and optimize risk management strategies.