20% of Americans are already using AI for financial advice — another 70% don't trust it

A fresh Gallup survey done with Edward Jones lays out a strange split in how Americans handle their money questions. About one in five adults who looked for financial advice in the past year turned to an AI tool for help. But ask people overall how much they trust AI's expertise on money matters, and the numbers turn cold: roughly three in ten have even some confidence in it, and just 3% say they trust it a great deal.

Compare that to professional financial advisers, where eight in ten adults report at least some trust. Yet only about a third of people who actually sought advice this year went to a professional. Far more, 73%, just did their own internet research. Add in the 35% who leaned on a parent, sibling or relative, and the 26% who picked things up from news or social media, and a picture emerges of people patching together financial knowledge from wherever is cheapest and closest, trust be damned.

Age splits this even further. Around a quarter of Gen Z and millennial adults who sought advice turned to AI, compared with 16% of Gen Xers and just 7% of baby boomers. Professional advisers run the opposite direction: only 14% of Gen Z and 21% of millennials hired one, versus 34% of Gen X and 55% of boomers. Cost is the obvious explanation here — researching online or prompting a chatbot doesn't come with a bill, and hiring a certified planner does.

MIT's Taha Choukhmane isn't telling people to avoid AI, just to be smart about what they ask it. He suggests using it to explain basic concepts — what a mutual fund is versus an index fund — rather than treating it as a decision-maker, and pushing it to cite sources so answers can be checked. Bobbi Rebell, a certified financial planner, draws a harder line: AI has no fiduciary duty to anyone. It doesn't know a person's full financial picture and isn't legally on the hook if the advice goes sideways. Certified planners are.

The survey, run by Gallup using its probability-based panel, polled 5,075 adults 21 and older this spring, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.8 percentage points. The numbers suggest AI is becoming a starting point for financial curiosity rather than a replacement for expert judgment — at least for now.