Does anyone use AI, if so, for what purpose and how?

I have used it for automating my admin related tasks around deals. It has been extremely helpful with procedures, taking things from hours down to minutes and sometimes even seconds. I have it help me write code and build programs to automate the tedious part of my job. Really cool stuff, I have learned how far you can push certain elements of Excel with VBA programming and how much it can really do. My immediate team is on the older side, so I've tried to develop streamlined and simple interfaces for them to use for their functions too. 

I essentially use it as a search engine. Very helpful in research but you still have to do the leg work (for now)

Not in finance, but I use it to write SQL queries for my tech role. Don't think I've written a line of code in a while. It's been amazing for tedious/administrative stuff as mentioned here.

Been using it for a lot of things. Sometimes I get documents that are scanned, and I need to grab a table from the scanned PDF. You could probably achieve similar results with Adobe's OCR and then converting to an Excel file, but we all know that Adobe many times screws up the conversion to Excel (merged cells, etc.). I have found that ChatGPT just does a better job scanning and then formatting in a simple way that doesn't require a lot of extra work. Don't do this with confidential information though, unless you have a corporate account that doesn't allow ChatGPT (or whatever AI) to use / store your data to train the model.

It's been pretty decent at giving me slide layout ideas, especially if I know the content I want to include but need help coming up with a layout that tells a compelling story without getting overly cluttered by my word vomit.

It's definitely the best at helping with my writing (being an LLM), especially if it's a more sensitive email that I want to make sure conveys the right message and tone without being too blunt or critical. Or sometimes just giving me ways to write a lighthearted / funny response that might help me build my relationship / camaraderie with the counterparty.

VBA coding is probably my favorite though, especially if you have some coding background / are technically minded. The more technically capable you are, the better you can prompt ChatGPT and it really saves a ton of time just drafting the initial layout of my code. I've even used it to shorten / improve / debug my code! I used to be in IB and I've been working to replicate a lot of the macros and automated tools my previous firm had (with much success). Saves a ton of time on repetitive tasks, as thenegotiator mentioned. 

Select VBA examples:
- Shape attribute picker: can pick up the exact place (either from the left or the top), size (width, height, or both), background color or border color of any item in PowerPoint. Oh, I should also mention, you can do this completely mouse free (just tap L for left, T for top, P for the position of both the left and top, W for width, H for height, S for size that takes both the width and height, etc..)
- Email drafter: can take a template email from Outlook, and then using an Excel list add the appropriate people in the To, Cc, and Bcc lines, and even customize greetings (e.g. just the first name concatenated with a comma if less than 3 people, firm name + team if more than 3 people) and subject lines (including the firm name or specific identifier in each email subject).
- Break PDF security on files: a lot of PDFs come with some sort of security that can be bypassed if run through MSFT's printer system a particular way (my personal secret method and also might be used for nefarious purposes, so no I won't share b/c of abuse potential), and PDFs with security usually means you can't just convert the PDF to Excel to get the data you might need. My macro allows you to select a folder with the PDFs and will run the secret sauce to get each one of those PDFs broken, no password needed.
- PowerPoint Table Editor: Say you've created a native PowerPoint table with logos within each row on the table. You realize you have to reorganize or re-sort the table. Sucks to be you, becaues now you've got to manually move the logos or images around / insert and delete rows, etc... Not with my macro. You can just open up a menu that allows you to move the entire row up or down in the table, and the logo moves with it. Time suck avoided. 

I regularly code VBA and Python now (no prior experience or training). We’ve built and are actively building new tools that are revolutionary for data and reporting.

AI has saved me soooo much time in analyzing long leases, and other legal docs (loan docs, partnership agreements). I can upload documents and ask it about specific clauses or fees, and it will pull tho info immediately in a digestible format. Before I would have to manually search through these documents and spend way too much time trying to read legal jargon.

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Been using it for market/economic overviews. Good to get some quick points for BOVs and OMs.

Basically excel modeling copilot. Legalese translator