Bridging the gap – the impact of ChatGPT on financial research

In March 2023, the release of GPT-4 and its application, Copilot, astounds the world and thrusts AI into the spotlight in industry, and academia. The incredible superiority of GPT-4 is demonstrated by its ability to achieve high scores on almost all mainstream academic and professional standard exams, Copilot’s capability to accomplish nearly all repetitive office work, and the rapid spread of its applications across massive areas of human society within weeks of its launch. These changes lead to the belief on the emergence of GPT-4 having a significant impact on academic research in the finance and accounting fields by establishing a consensus on the psychological acceptance of AI and rapidly eliminating technical barriers of using it. This paper presents practical examples to demonstrate GPT-4’s effectiveness in sentiment analysis, ESG analysis, corporate culture analysis, and Federal Reserve opinion analysis, and provides instructive recommendations for applying it in these subject areas.