AI in action · Tools
Assistant, Copilot or Autopilot: How Brokers' New AI Tools Differ
Schwab's new assistant answers questions, Interactive Brokers asks you to approve every trade, and eToro's has already executed more than 500,000 trades. Here's how to tell what an AI tool at your broker actually does.
Almost every large broker now has an AI tool, but the label covers very different products. An industry overview by Jefferies, reported by Yahoo Finance in July, found that mentions of AI on the earnings calls of the six brokerages it covers nearly doubled in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the previous quarter. The useful question is not whether a broker uses AI, but who presses the button.
The first group is assistants. Charles Schwab began rolling out an assistant called Charley to eligible US customers in October. According to Crowdfund Insider, it helps with transfers, payments, quotes, watchlists, alerts and Schwab's research, shows balances, positions and tax documents, and can carry out a few account tasks such as setting alerts or enrolling a holding in dividend reinvestment. Placing trades is not among the listed functions, and it can hand the user over to a human representative.
The second group is copilots that suggest and prepare, while the customer decides. Interactive Brokers introduced a semi-automated tool in June that provides stock research and live market analysis but requires the investor to approve every trade, an approach it calls "human in the middle". It covers stocks and ETFs.
The third group is agents that can act on their own within limits the user sets. eToro said in May that its Tori assistant had executed more than 500,000 trades in its first year and was used by more than a third of its club members; it can trade stocks, commodities, crypto, ETFs and currencies. Coinbase's platform supports spot crypto and derivatives, and Robinhood, which opened agentic accounts to technical users in May, began rolling out in-app agents to all its customers on September 29.
Before using any of them, it is worth checking four things: whether the tool can place orders by itself, whether there is an approval step and limits you control, which assets it can trade, and whether the company presents it as advice or as a tool. An assistant that explains your statement and an agent that trades overnight carry very different risks, even when both are called AI.
Sources: Yahoo Finance — Brokerages accelerate rollout of AI trading tools (Jul 5, 2026), citing Jefferies; Crowdfund Insider — Schwab announces AI integration (Sep 30, 2026)