UBS’s Investment Bank Is Building an AI Slop Factory

UBS is industrializing the production of material sent to clients. The bank says its AI-assisted writing tool has been used more than 30,000 times, while AI-generated titles and email hooks have increased email open rates by 16 percent. Those figures demonstrate a more efficient content machine. They say nothing about whether clients received sharper analysis, better recommendations or an insight worth paying for. An investment bank should face a higher standard than an email marketing operation. 

The same obsession with scale extends to video. In 2025, UBS said it was targeting roughly 5,000 analyst-avatar videos annually, against existing production capacity of about 1,000. The videos require analyst approval and disclose their AI origins. Even with those safeguards, five versions of an ordinary argument remain an ordinary argument. A synthetic analyst delivering polished commentary can manufacture the appearance of expertise without adding a single useful observation. 

For clients, the worst version of this model would be an inbox full of fluent, interchangeable material: summaries that repeat the obvious, presentations padded with generic strategic options, and recommendations that barely engage with the recipient’s actual problem. That is the slop risk. The bank saves time producing the material; the client spends time extracting whatever substance survives. Calling that productivity overlooks whose time is being wasted.

UBS argues that AI frees analysts for research and client meetings. It should prove that benefit through the quality of what clients receive. More output, more opens and more videos are a weak substitute for original thinking and defensible advice. If the bank’s AI push chiefly makes generic commentary cheaper to produce and harder to escape, clients are being served mass-produced noise with a premium financial brand attached.