Robinhood Adds AI-Powered Summaries to Cortex Investing Assistant

Robinhood has announced a new feature for Cortex, its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered investing assistant.

Digests, announced Tuesday (Aug. 19), uses generative AI to offer quick reviews of news, analyst reports, technicals and Robinhood’s proprietary data to summarize why a particular stock might be moving “in plain English.”

According to the company’s announcement, Digests began rolling out to customers in the U.S. this summer and is now available for users in the U.K.

“Digests by Robinhood Cortex is our first AI insight tool—built directly into our app,” said Jordan Sinclair, president at Robinhood U.K. “We believe our U.K. customers—from first-time investors to seasoned traders—will appreciate the timely, accessible summaries that highlight what may be moving a stock. We will keep introducing AI tools that prioritise customer education and help our investors navigate the market with confidence.”

Robinhood announced Cortex in March as part of a larger range of product rollouts that included a new banking offering and wealth management service.

And last month, Robinhood released quarterly earnings which, as PYMNTS wrote, showed “a company pivoting sharply from its roots in commission-free retail trading toward a diversified, multi-lane financial platform.”

In other AI news, PYMNTS wrote earlier this week about the high cost of “inference,” the stage in which an AI model is actually used to come up with predictions, responses or insights.

Pre-training a frontier AI model, that report said, is a one-time effort, and usually costly. It’s like a college student taking a wide range of education classes. The better the training they get, the more prepared the graduate is to enter the workforce.

“With inference, it’s like putting that graduate to work. Companies often further train the graduate — for example, teach them to do HR tasks — which is similar to enterprises fine-tuning AI models for custom purposes,” PYMNTS wrote. “But in this scenario, the graduate doesn’t get a set salary, but rather bills by the task or hour. It’s a running tab.”

For businesses, the report added, running inference happens each time a worker queries a chatbot, a fraud system screens a transaction, or a doctor turns to an AI tool to interpret a medical scan. Those costs are recurring and can quickly add up.