When a bank or investment firm holds a virtual event, there is usually a reason. It could be a client session, an investor update, a talk about the market, or even a way to generate new leads.
These financial virtual events have become a staple of how financial firms engage with people online. Now, AI is starting to be deployed in some of these areas too. As these events become more common, AI is also starting to find its way into different parts of the process. AI can help moderate questions, generate transcripts, analyze attendee engagement, personalize experiences, and turn event content into follow-up material.
But when AI handles financial communications or attendee data, compliance needs to be part of the process from the start. FINRA has stated that its existing rules remain technology-neutral and continue to apply when firms use generative AI and large language models. FINRA Regulatory Notice 24-09
So, where does AI create the most important compliance considerations for financial virtual events?
What Areas of AI Compliance Should Financial Firms Focus On?
AI can be used before, during, and after a virtual event. The things to consider can also change depending on how AI is being used.
For financial teams, some key areas to consider includes-
- Creating webinar or marketing content with AI.
- Transcribing webinars and creating summaries.
- Using AI to answer audience questions and help with moderation.
- Looking at attendee data and event activity.
- Suggesting sessions or content based on attendee interests.
- Protecting attendee data and deciding how long to keep it.
- Using AI for security checks and fraud detection.
- Checking third-party AI tools and their vendors.
The level of review should depend on how AI is being used, and the type of data involved.
For example, using AI to create an internal event checklist is very different from using it to generate an investor-facing communication. The second use case needs a much stronger review process because the output reaches an audience outside the organization.
This is where a clear generative AI governance framework for financial virtual events can help. If a firm already has some basic rules around how AI should be used, it doesn’t need to look at every AI feature separately. It helps to have rules on what AI can be used for, how data is handled, when a person needs to check the result, and who is responsible.
What Effect Can AI Chatbots Have on Financial Webinar Communications?
Managing virtual events becomes easier with chatbots. They can answer your questions about the schedule, help attendees find the right sessions, share basic event details and take some pressure off moderators.
But when the answers are about financial products or investments, then things can get more sensitive.
A financial webinar chatbot should:
- Use approved information from the event
- Not give investment recommendations
- Pass sensitive questions to a human
- Have clear limits on what it can answer
- Be tested before the event starts
- Allow moderators to step in when needed
Teams can also develop an AI-powered webinar moderation compliance checklist with clear rules about what the chatbot can answer, what information it can access, when a human should step in, and which interactions should be recorded.
That is useful for large webinars when moderators may get hundreds of questions at once. AI is able to sort and organize the questions, and moderators can take over anything that needs human judgment.
What Does AI Transcription Mean for Webinar Recordkeeping?
Automated transcription can turn a webinar into a searchable text record within minutes. It can also support captions, summaries, and post-event content.
For financial firms, however, a transcript may contain more than routine event information.
It can include:
- Speaker statements
- Audience questions
- Product discussions
- Financial information
- Customer information
- Disclosures
- Other sensitive business information
That makes AI-powered webinar transcription and recordkeeping an area that deserves careful review.
Before using an AI transcription tool, firms should understand:
- What information is sent to the AI system
- Where the transcript is stored
- Who can access it
- How long it is retained
- Whether the transcript can be edited
- How errors are identified
- Whether the provider uses submitted information for other purposes
FINRA’s guidance specifically highlights considerations around data privacy, data integrity, reliability, and accuracy when firms use generative AI.
The goal is not only to produce an accurate transcript. Teams also need to understand what happens to the transcript after the event and how it fits into their existing recordkeeping process.
How does AI analytics affect attendee privacy
AI analytics can give event teams a much deeper view of attendee behavior than basic registration and attendance figures.
Teams will be able to analyze the following depending on the platform:
- Session attendance
- Watch time
- Poll responses
- Chat activity
- Questions asked
- Content downloads
- Networking activity
- Other engagement signals
These insights can help teams understand which sessions performed well and which topics attracted the most attention.
But collecting more data also generates more responsibility.
Using AI to understand the behavior of the attendees can pose privacy risks when organizations collect detailed behavioral information without clearly defining why it is needed, how it will be used, or how long it will be kept.
Before turning on advanced analytics, teams should ask:
- Is this data needed?
- Is sensitive information being analyzed?
- Who can access the results?
- How long will the data be kept?
- Is information being shared with an AI provider?
- Could automated scoring create misleading assumptions about an attendee?
Airmeet’s discussion of engagement analytics shows how event platforms can use attendee interactions to identify deeper engagement patterns and insights. AI-Driven Engagement Analytics: What Event Teams Can Learn
For financial firms, the important question is not simply what AI can measure. It is whether there is a clear business purpose and appropriate control around the data being collected.
Can AI-Generated Content Create Financial Compliance Issues?
Generative AI can create webinar descriptions, emails, presentation outlines, social posts, summaries, and follow-up messages in seconds.
The speed is useful, but AI-generated content still needs to meet the same standards as content created by a person.
FINRA Rule 2210 establishes standards for communications with the public, and FINRA’s AI guidance makes clear that those existing requirements continue to apply when technology is used to generate communications.
That is why firms should understand the FINRA requirements for AI-generated webinar content as part of their existing communications review process.
A reviewer should check:
- Facts and statistics
- Financial claims
- Product descriptions
- Disclosures
- Performance-related statements
- Potentially misleading language
- Whether the final communication matches approved messaging
The same principle applies to AI disclosure requirements for financial webinars. Where a disclosure is required, the firm should determine the applicable requirement and include it through the normal approval process rather than assuming the AI tool will handle it.
In March 2024, the SEC announced settled charges against investment advisers Delphia (USA) Inc. and Global Predictions Inc. concerning allegedly false or misleading statements about their use of AI. The firms agreed to pay a combined $400,000 in civil penalties.
The message is clear: businesses must be accurate in their AI statements, just as they would be with any other material statement.
What Are the Main AI Compliance Risks in Financial Services Webinars?
The risks depend on how firms use AI, but some of the issues that keep coming up are
1. AI hallucinations
AI can produce information that sounds credible but is incorrect. An incorrect claim, figure, or description that can cause serious issues if it reaches investors or customers.
2. Data exposure
When tools process attendee information, transcripts, recordings, and internal documents, firms must know what happens to this information and make sure it is not put to wrong use
3. Limited human review
When content generated by AI is published without a human check, mistakes can easily be missed.
4. Record-Keeping Gaps
The company should include transcripts, summaries, messages, and records generated by the AI tool in its recordkeeping process.
5. Vendor risk
Third-party AI features can introduce additional questions around security, privacy, data usage, and accountability.
These are some of the key AI compliance risks in financial services webinars. Assessing them before an AI feature is introduced is much easier than trying to fix a control gap after an event.
Can AI Help Detect Fraud in Financial Virtual Events?
AI can also support event security.
Some automated systems can help in identifying:
- Suspicious registrations
- Bot activity
- Unusual login behavior
- Spam
- Abnormal attendee behavior
- Other patterns that require investigation
AI can process these signals quickly and flag activity for a moderator or security team.
Airmeet’s security guidance looks at AI-based threat detection, bot detection, anomaly detection, and behavioral analysis during online events.
The important point is that automated detection should support human investigation rather than automatically treating every unusual behavior as malicious.
What Do Deepfakes Mean for Financial Event Security?
Deepfakes add another concern for organizations conducting important business over video.
A convincing fake video or voice could make it seem as if an executive or other trusted person is part of a virtual meeting when actually they are not.
As per reports, in 2024 engineering company Arup was the victim of a deepfake scam in which a Hong Kong employee transferred HK$200 million after being deceived by digitally recreated versions of company staff during a video conference.
Financial organizations can reduce this type of risk by adding verification steps for sensitive requests and high-risk interactions.
Useful measures include:
- Verifying unusual requests through a separate communication channel
- Restricting speaker and presenter permissions
- Using controlled access for private sessions
- Training employees to recognize suspicious activity
- Having an incident response process in place
The technology may be new, but the underlying principle is familiar: important decisions should not depend on a single unverified communication.
How to Use AI Safely in Investor Webinars?
Before the webinar starts, teams should decide what AI can be used for and what it should not be used for. AI can be used for some basic tasks, such as
- Creating a first draft of the event outline
- Drafting internal messages
- Creating captions and transcripts
- Sorting attendee questions
- Summarizing approved event content
- Looking at attendee engagement
A few tasks that need to have stronger controls are writing messages for investors, answering questions about financial products, handling attendee information that is sensitive, or making decisions that affect people.
Using AI safely in investor webinars also means knowing when a person needs to check something. AI can do the routine work, and a person can check it when accuracy, privacy, or regulatory rules are involved.
How Can Firms Build a Human-in-the-Loop AI Workflow?
A simple workflow can look like this:
1. Define the task
Decide what you want AI to do.
2. Control the input
Give it only the information it needs.
3. Generate the output
Let it do the task you have approved.
4. Review the result
Have a person check the result before using it.
5. Approve before publishing
Only approved content moves to the audience.
6. Keep an audit trail
Document relevant approvals, changes, and decisions where appropriate.
This way teams can use AI for webinar content while still having a person check the work.
It also helps teams decide which financial virtual event tasks should remain under human control. Full automation may not be appropriate when investment recommendations, sensitive financial communications, regulatory judgments, and high-risk security decisions are being discussed.
How Do You Audit AI Tools Used in Virtual Events?
Before approving an AI feature, financial teams need to know what happens beyond the user interface.
A basic review can ask:
- What does the AI feature actually do?
- What kind of data does the tool process?
- Where does the data go?
- Is customer data used when training the AI?
- Who can access the data?
- Can the AI feature be disabled?
- How are errors identified?
- What records are created?
- How can records be exported or retained?
- Who is responsible when the AI produces an incorrect result?
These questions provide a starting point for how to audit AI tools used in virtual events.
They can also be part of the firm’s regular technology and vendor checks.
For firms doing a formal review, an AI risk assessment for a broker-dealer webinar can help them check each AI use case, the controls being used, and when a person needs to review it before the feature is approved.
What Should Firms Ask AI Webinar Vendors?
Firms should ask about AI features when they are checking a vendor, instead of waiting until after they have chosen the platform.
Ask vendors the following questions:
Where is the AI being used?
Identify AI-enabled features across registration, moderation, analytics, transcription, content creation, and follow-up.
What information is being used by the AI tool?
Does the tool use attendee details, recordings, transcripts, chat messages, questions, or analytics data
Can the firm control AI features?
Teams should know whether individual AI functions can be switched off or restricted.
How are AI results checked?
Check if a person can review, approve, or change the results.
What security measures are in place?
Check how the platform handles login, access, data security, monitoring, and security issues.
What happens to event records?
Find out where transcripts, recordings, analytics, and other content are stored and how long they are kept.
All these questions allow companies to understand how the platform works before using these features.
For a broader platform evaluation, Airmeet’s enterprise webinar security guide covers areas such as authentication, access control, data residency, audit logging, secure recordings, and incident response.
What Should Firms Look for in an AI-Powered Virtual Event Platform?
The number of AI features on a platform is not the only consideration.
Financial organizations should look for:
- Strong access controls
- Clear data-handling practices
- Configurable AI features
- Human moderation
- Reliable event records
- Privacy controls
- Security features
- Transparent vendor policies
- Useful analytics
- Integration with existing compliance workflows
The platform should make it possible to use AI without losing control over the information, communications, and decisions surrounding an event.
That is especially important when the same platform handles registration data, live interactions, recordings, analytics, and post-event content.
How Can Firms Build a Practical AI Governance Process?
A governance process does not need to slow down every event.
Start by documenting approved AI use cases and then define:
- Which AI tools are approved
- Which tasks require human review
- What information can be entered
- What information cannot be entered
- How outputs are checked
- How records are retained
- How vendors are reviewed
- What happens when an AI-related incident occurs
This creates a repeatable approach to AI use instead of leaving individual event teams to make decisions on their own.
It also gives compliance, marketing, event, IT, and security teams a shared framework for evaluating new AI capabilities.
Which Financial Virtual Event Tasks Need Human Oversight?
Not every AI-enabled task needs the same level of human involvement.
For teams asking, which financial virtual event tasks should never be fully automated? A useful starting point is to look at the potential impact of an incorrect decision.
Tasks involving:
- Investment recommendations
- Investor-facing financial claims
- Sensitive financial information
- Regulatory judgments
- High-risk attendee decisions
- Significant security incidents
may require meaningful human oversight.
AI can handle repetitive work well. Decisions that depend on judgment, context, and accountability should remain subject to appropriate human control.
Conclusion
AI can make financial virtual events easier to manage. It can help teams moderate conversations, create transcripts, understand attendee behavior, detect unusual activity, and repurpose event content.
But those benefits need to sit within a clear compliance framework.
Financial firms should know what their AI tools are doing, what information they process, where human review is required, and how vendors handle the data involved. Existing regulatory obligations continue to apply when technology is used.
The practical approach is to start with clearly defined use cases, limit the information provided to AI tools, review important outputs, conduct proper vendor due diligence, and maintain appropriate records.
That gives financial teams room to use AI efficiently while keeping compliance, privacy, security, and accountability part of the event process.
FAQs
FINRA’s Regulatory Notice 24-09 explains that its existing rules are technology-neutral and continue to apply when member firms use generative AI and similar technologies. The notice does not add new rules for firms to follow.
Yes. AI can assist with webinar descriptions, emails, summaries, scripts, and other materials. However, firms should review AI-generated communications for accuracy, applicable disclosures, and compliance before publication.
The answer depends on the type of content and the firm’s recordkeeping rules. When using AI tools for a webinar, firms should have an idea of where the records are stored, who can access them, and how long they need to be kept.
They can answer only questions, like session timings and general event details. But questions about financial products, recommendations, or other sensitive topics should be handled by a responsible person of the company.
Some of the common issues faced while using these tools are incorrect AI content, problems with how data is handled, not having enough human checks, missing records, security problems and risks from third-party vendors.
First, decide what AI will be used for and what information it can access. Manually check work that could cause problems. This is especially important for financial information and investor communications. Firms should also protect attendee data, check AI-generated content before using it, and keep the records they are required to keep.
Related Reads
If you want to explore the wider role of AI, security, and virtual event technology, these Airmeet resources are useful next reads:
