Being a creator isn’t what it used to be.
While the upper echelons of the art world are usually reserved for people of unique vision and inspiration, like the Picassos, the Nuryevs, the Haydns, the Joyces and the Eliots, there are other echelons full of creators of great skill but less revolutionary vision. For every top-tier dance company or art school, there’s probably half a dozen sub-elite tier schools or companies of very high quality.
We think generative AI has the potential to wipe those less elite echelons of the professional creative world out.
Welcome to another AI & Finance, where we, a former arts school kid, are thinking deeply about the future of the arts as a commercial entity, before we run down a huge week of financial artificial intelligence news for you.
Just this week, the Oscars announced that AI actors and writing will not be eligible for awards—this comes after AI-generated actress Tilly Norwood and an AI representation of the late Val Kilmer made waves in Hollywood.
Also this week, music streaming service Spotify updated its terms to include verification badges in an attempt to throttle an inundation of AI-generated content.
AI-generated content has started to spread to other artistic mediums, too, with AI writers now churning out poetry, short stories and novels (not to mention news and opinon) at a pace that human writers cannot compete with. Even dance isn’t safe, with AI already generating dance videos for online content consumers, and AI choreographers already working with humanoid robotic dancers.
AI is getting pretty skilled at creating convincing art, and we’re not far from having serious authenticity issues across the major artistic media, with AI passing a kind of creative Turing test: we really won’t be able to tell what art is created by real living people, and what art is created by machines.
Within a few years, we’re going to be inundated with more creative, so-called artistic content that was created just for its own sake, but not by human hands or skills, but by AI. AI-generated art is going to encroach further into our radio airtime, our social media scrolls, our binge-watching sessions, our gameplay, and it’s going to fill the walls of our offices and sometimes our homes.
Art that stands out, that succeeds, will not necessarily be that art that is made by human hands alone, but by people who are able to imbue technology with their ideas and feelings to create content that stands not just apart from, but above the rabble of AI-enhanced creators.
These days, it’s not enough to just be a creator and have some skills in the creative arts. We really have to be inspired, and, if we want to optimize our creative output, we also have to be open to harnessing these technological tools to make the most of our ideas, and to outcompeting generative AI by making art saturated with meaning, emotion and originality. Art is becoming more an arena for ideas than skill.
The Thomas Kincaides of the world are probably going to be supplanted by AI—but there will always be room in our hearts—and on our walls—for another Salvador Dali. How many creative geniuses, throughout history, have been denied because they weren’t able to go through the proper channels, to work with the right masters or to attend the right schools, to access the right audience and the right patronage, to hone their skills to the point where they could turn their passion and their work into a livelihood?
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—if anything, the common belief among young people of moderate talent and inspiration that they’re going to be able to carve out some sort of living from working in the arts should forever be put to bed by AI. Most of us aren’t like Basquiat. We don’t have the brains or talent to just think big thoughts and come out with something that people value or celebrate. If we do pursue art, we’re going to do it for art’s sake, because we love it, and we can’t imagine living without creating—and that’s probably as it should be.
Let’s get to your headlines…
1. Anthropic
Anthropic announced the release of 10 ready-to-run agent templates for the most time-consuming work in financial services: building pitchbooks, screening KYC files, and closing the books at month-end. Each one ships as a plugin in Claude Cowork and Claude Code, and as a cookbook for Claude Managed Agents, so a team can put Claude on real financial work in days rather than months. Claude also now works across Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook (coming soon) through the Claude add-ins for Microsoft 365. Once the add-ins are installed, context carries automatically between applications, so work that starts in a model can end in a deck without re-explaining anything in between.
Anthropic is also continuing to expand its partner ecosystem with new connectors and an MCP app, so the agents draw on the data financial professionals already use. Connectors give Claude governed, real-time access to a provider’s data, and MCP apps go a step further by embedding the provider’s own tools directly inside Claude.
Each agent template is a reference architecture that packages three things: skills (instructions and domain knowledge for the task), connectors (governed access to the data the task runs on), and subagents (additional Claude models that are called upon by the main agent, for specific sub-tasks such as comparables selection or methodology checks). Firms can adapt any of them to their own modeling conventions, risk policies, and approval flows.
2. Avant
Avant, a leading financial technology company, today announced the deployment of an artificial intelligence-powered Virtual Agent, developed in partnership with Replicant, a market-leading conversational AI platform, across the Avant Card inbound customer service operation. Since launching in January 2026, the Virtual Agent has helped improve efficiency, resolution, and customer satisfaction.
Avant’s Virtual Agent was built around five operational principles: always-on availability, a deliberate shift of routine work away from human specialists, structured data capture, instant scalability during demand spikes, and consistent, compliant customer communication on every interaction.
With structured interaction data now flowing from every Virtual Agent conversation, Avant’s teams have clearer, more actionable signals about what customers need and where the product and service experience can be improved. This kind of feedback loop is difficult to achieve at scale with human-handled calls alone, yet it is critical to delivering an excellent customer experience.
3. Brightfin
Brightfin, the only ITFM and Technology Expense Management solution built natively on ServiceNow, today announced an AI-Native architecture that fundamentally improves how organizations manage IT spend. Rather than bolting AI onto legacy systems, Brightfin has engineered intelligence from the ground up – starting with the data, building contextual awareness on top of it, and delivering AI agents that speak the language of IT finance.
Brightfin’s unified budget-to-billing data model creates a stable, governed foundation that connects contracts, invoices, inventory, and budgets into a single source of truth – something no external ITFM tool or native platform module can replicate. This is a structured financial backbone purpose-built for enterprise IT spend, and it’s what makes everything above it possible.
A context-aware, AI-Native, intelligence layer understands relationships across the entire IT financial lifecycle – which vendors map to which services, which contracts are approaching renewal, which cost anomalies deserve attention – before a user ever asks.
4. Charles Schwab
Charles Schwab today announced the availability of the firm’s first generative artificial intelligence capability for retail investor clients. Designed to help provide greater clarity to investing, the capability delivers insights that bring together portfolio performance, relevant market news, and curated Schwab Center for Financial Research (SCFR) commentary in one simple view to provide context on factors that may potentially be impacting a client’s portfolio and why.
Schwab research shows growing client interest in using AI as part of the investing process, particularly when paired with human expertise and support.
The new portfolio insights capability integrates Schwab data, research, and third-party market news into timely, tailored summaries for each client’s holdings. AI‑powered explanations incorporate Schwab expert commentary to help inform and provide critical context to investors. It is designed to provide information, not investment advice. The capability is covered by Schwab’s privacy, security, and data standards.
5. EmotionSheild AI
EmotionShield AITM, a Delaware-based artificial intelligence company, today announced the launch of its Emotion-Adaptive Decision Intelligence (EADI) platform, establishing Behavioral Intelligence Infrastructure (BII) as a new category in financial technology. The platform is designed to address a critical gap in modern markets: the human decision layer.
As artificial intelligence scales across modern financial systems, the constraint is no longer access to information, but the ability of humans to process and act on it effectively. The rapid growth of AI-generated insights has introduced a new challenge: cognitive overload, where decision-making deteriorates under speed, complexity, and emotional pressure.
While most trading platforms continue to increase the volume of signals, indicators, and automation, EmotionShield AI takes a fundamentally different approach—reducing decision noise and focusing on improving how decisions are made.
6. iA Financial Group
iA Financial Group, a leader in insurance and wealth management in Canada, today announced a strategic partnership with PINQ² (“Plateforme d’Innovation Numérique et Quantique” in French—Digital and Quantum Innovation Platform), marking a significant milestone in the insurance sector.
iA Financial Group is the first Canadian insurer to partner with PINQ²’s Advanced Hybrid Platform, using classical and quantum computing to drive innovation. The company aims to explore quantum computing power to enhance its operations and services.
This collaboration builds on iA Financial Group’s long-standing investment in artificial intelligence, which has been instrumental in optimizing financial modelling, enhancing portfolio management, strengthening risk analysis and personalizing client experiences. The exploration of quantum computing will further accelerate these advancements, offer unparalleled computational capabilities and open new avenues for applications, faster decision-making and more relevant solutions for clients.
7. Intuit
Intuit (NASDAQ: INTU), the global financial technology platform that makes Intuit TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, Mailchimp and Intuit Enterprise Suite, today announced QuickBooks Workforce in the U.S., a new, end-to-end solution powered by agentic AI and human expertise, that radically transforms how small and mid-market businesses run their human capital management (HCM). From attracting the right employees and delivering a seamless onboarding experience to supporting employee growth and engagement, QuickBooks Workforce unifies the full employee lifecycle in one place, replacing disconnected tools with done-for-you experiences that help teams reduce HR overhead, eliminate the burden of administrative work, and manage labor costs in real time.
Small and mid-market businesses often rely on 7 to 25 different tools1 to manage their workforce, creating unnecessary complexity, manual work, and fragmented data, at an estimated cost of $120,000 spent annually on software.2 QuickBooks Workforce directly addresses this challenge, equipping businesses with a robust HCM solution that automates, simplifies, and syncs their workforce management, including payroll, time tracking, benefits, recruiting, hiring, performance, and compliance, on a single platform.
Embedded directly in QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Online Advanced, and Intuit Enterprise Suite, QuickBooks Workforce is the only HCM solution that truly enables businesses to view and manage the entire employee lifecycle alongside their financials, providing real-time insights and a holistic, 360-degree view of their business that allows them to make smarter decisions, save time and money, and operate with greater accuracy and confidence. Because QuickBooks Workforce is on the Intuit platform, a conversational “chat” interface3 is all it takes to transform HCM from a series of manual steps into intelligent, done-for-you workflows powered by a team of virtual AI agents. This helps businesses save time on recurring tasks with features including the Payroll Agent, which automatically collects and validates time data, flags inconsistencies, and runs payroll on behalf of the business owner while helping ensure accuracy. Other automations help streamline multi-step processes like promotions and offboarding, connect payroll and benefits data, and unify workforce insights in real time, delivering faster and more informed decision-making that enables businesses to scale confidently while giving employees a seamless experience, from hire to retire.
8. Moment
MarketAxess Holdings Inc. (Nasdaq: MKTX), the operator of a leading electronic trading platform for fixed-income securities, and Moment, the AI platform for investment management, today announced the launch of a new interface that gives large wealth managers and registered investment advisors (RIAs) streamlined access to MarketAxess’s institutional liquidity and pricing directly on the Moment platform.
Moment’s clients will now have access to liquidity from MarketAxess’ global network of more than 2,100 institutional investors and dealers. Moment’s platform seamlessly integrates retail order-driven markets with the traditional institutional RFQ market, enabling access to institutional liquidity.
9. Options Technology
Options Technology, the leading managed IT services and technology solutions provider, today announced Larry Leibowitz to Chairman of its Board. Leibowitz, who joined the Board in June 2023 as an independent director, assumes the Chairmanship as Options continues to accelerate its growth across key financial centres worldwide.
With more than three decades of leadership experience across exchanges, trading technology, and financial infrastructure, Leibowitz brings unparalleled strategic vision to the Chairman role. He has held executive and board positions across capital markets, financial technology, and asset management, including serving as Chief Operating Officer, Head of Global Equities Markets, and Member of the Board of Directors of NYSE Euronext from 2007 to 2013. He has also held senior positions at UBS, Morgan Stanley, and Credit Suisse First Boston, and is currently CEO of Entrypoint Capital, a quantitative investment management firm.
Since joining the Options Board, Leibowitz has played a key role in shaping the company’s strategic direction, contributing deep expertise in market structure, trading infrastructure, and the evolving demands of global financial services clients.
10. Options Technology
Options Technology, a global leader in financial technology managed services and IT infrastructure, today announced its PrivateMind solution has been selected by a Tier 1 bank for major AI deployment in its Iceland data center.
PrivateMind is a fully governed AI platform, purpose-built for financial institutions that demand absolute data privacy, performance, and control. Deployed in strategic hubs, with direct connectivity to exchanges and liquidity providers, PrivateMind empowers teams to explore AI safely and at speed, and leverage GPU acceleration alongside large scale inference projects.
Uniting PrivateMind’s secure AI capabilities with Iceland’s renewable-powered, high-density facilities, provides organizations with the sustainable foundation needed for responsible AI at scale. Hosted within atNorth’s ICE02 campus, this site is also strategically located between New York and London financial hubs with excellent connectivity and low-latency networks, making them ideally suited to AI and other high-performance workloads.
11. ParaScript
ParaScript, an AI-powered document processing company, today announced an alliance with ABBYY, combining ABBYY’s OCR and intelligent document processing (IDP) platform with ParaScript’s handwriting recognition and fraud detection capabilities to deliver a unified document intelligence solution that improves accuracy, reduces manual review and strengthens fraud prevention.
ABBYY is a global provider of IDP and AI-powered OCR technology, widely used by enterprises to extract and process data from documents at scale. Together, the companies deliver a comprehensive approach to document automation, addressing the full spectrum of document types from printed text and structured forms to handwritten content, signatures and payment instruments. Customers benefit from a unified workflow that accelerates processing, reduces operational complexity and improves decision accuracy without replacing existing systems.
The alliance is designed to support organizations across financial services, banking, healthcare, insurance and government sectors, where high-volume document processing and accuracy are critical. Use cases include check and remittance processing, loan documentation, identity verification and complex records management requiring consistent, high-quality data extraction.
12. Paymentus
Paymentus (NYSE: PAY), a leader in secure billing, payment, and customer experience innovation, today announced patented Billeo™ and BillWallet®, and additional patented technologies designed to transform bills, invoices, and statements into intelligent, interactive experiences designed to help consumers understand, manage, and pay with ease—establishing a new category: AI-native Service Commerce.
Built for the modern service economy, these innovations are intended to move beyond traditional transactions to create persistent, intelligent relationships between consumers and service providers. Together, they form the foundation of Paymentus’ AI-native platform for secure, personalized Service Commerce.
Paymentus is establishing a new category—AI-native Service Commerce—where every service interaction becomes intelligent, secure, and outcome-driven. Instead of fragmented experiences across channels, consumers can engage seamlessly through web, mobile, voice, messaging, or emerging agentic interfaces—all within a unified, persistent service relationship that spans understanding, interaction, and payment.
13. Sedgwick
Sedgwick, the world’s leading risk and claims administration partner, has officially introduced Omni, the company’s fully integrated, proprietary digital ecosystem for claims and risk management. The ecosystem, announced today at RISKWORLD 2026, brings together Sedgwick’s industry-leading data set, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to power the future of claims to deliver best-in-class outcomes, frictionless experiences, and unmatched insights for their clients.
The proprietary AI within Sedgwick’s Omni is purpose-built and outcome-driven. It has been expanded to assist with document and call summarization, digital triage, severity modeling, automated reserving, fraud detection, and quality oversight. Omni will drive predictability, repeatability, and consistency in all work accomplished at Sedgwick, building upon considerable success with AI already.
Sedgwick’s Omni digital ecosystem is designed to deliver deeper, more valuable insights by harnessing Sedgwick’s unmatched data scale to inform decisions throughout the entire claim lifecycle. Through predictive intelligence and analytics that evaluate claim performance at scale, Omni surfaces trends and risks that would otherwise remain hidden and embeds that intelligence directly into everyday workflows. By removing friction and automating routine analysis, Omni frees up Sedgwick’s experts to focus on what only humans can do by applying judgment, empathy, and experience to drive better outcomes at every stage of the claim.
14. Suralink
Suralink, the agentic automation platform for accounting firms and their clients, today announced Workpaper Suite Intelligence, a new set of capabilities within its Workpaper Suite designed to transform how audit and engagement teams turn raw client data into completed workpapers.
Workpaper Suite Intelligence embeds AI directly into Excel workpapers and reduces the manual work associated with data extraction and document interpretation. It includes two AI-powered capabilities: Extract Links, which captures and structures data from client documents, and Link Answers, which allows teams to query complex files, such as lease and debt agreements, and returns relevant information in seconds. Every data point and answer gets linked to its original source for fast verification and auditability.
With Workpaper Suite Intelligence, staff no longer need to spend hours “staring and comparing” PDFs to Excel, and reviewers don’t need to retrace steps through lengthy documents to validate outputs. Data is automatically prepared and made ready for immediate use, allowing teams to begin higher-value work sooner.
15. Upstart
Justice Federal Credit Union (Justice Federal), based in Chantilly, Virginia, with assets of $1.2 billion, has partnered with Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST), the leading artificial intelligence (AI) lending marketplace, to broaden its reach and effectively address the increasing consumer demand for accessible financial solutions.
Greg Jenkins, Assistant Vice President of Lending, further states, “Partnering with Upstart has allowed Justice Federal to grow beyond its traditional channels to reach new audiences, while delivering a streamlined lending experience.”
Justice Federal began offering personal loans as a partner of Upstart in January 2026. On Upstart.com, qualified personal loan applicants who meet Justice Federal’s lending criteria receive customized offers and are then directed to complete their membership application and loan closing process seamlessly.
16. Upstart
Upstart Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: UPST), the leading artificial intelligence (AI) lending marketplace, today announced a forward-flow commitment from funds managed by affiliates of Fortress Investment Group (“Fortress”). Fortress has agreed to purchase up to $1.25 billion of consumer loans originated through the Upstart platform over the course of 15 months.
The agreement follows an initial forward flow transaction between Upstart and Fortress announced in 2025.
17. Wolters Kluwer
Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting today announced the general availability of CCH Axcess Workflow powered by Expert AI, a new product enhancement that brings intelligent, AI-driven scheduling recommendations directly into the CCH Axcess platform. The solution helps tax and accounting firms automatically match the right staff to the right work at the right time, reducing administrative burden and improving productivity across firm operations.
Powered by Wolters Kluwer Expert AI, the calendar functionality within CCH Axcess Workflow helps firms more intelligently plan, prioritize, and manage work. Using real-time Workflow data, it analyzes workloads, project timelines, staff skills, and firm-defined constraints to generate smart scheduling recommendations. These AI-driven insights are embedded directly into everyday Workflow activities, reducing reliance on manual, spreadsheet-based scheduling and improving efficiency across daily operations.
Unlike rules-based scheduling tools, CCH Axcess Workflow powered by Expert AI continuously evaluates staffing capacity, deadlines, task complexity, and historical workload patterns to generate optimized scheduling recommendations. Because it is embedded within the cloud-native CCH Axcess platform, the solution is fully integrated with Workflow tasks, deliverables, firm calendars, and related firm management data.
