AI lawyer bots wipe £12bn off software companies - but silver and gold bounce back
Billions of pounds have been wiped off the value of stocks vulnerable to disruption from AI after the release of a tool that automates legal work.
Just as gold and silver rebounded following their recent rout, heavy selling on the stock market saw data and analytics giant Relx shed nearly £7billion of its value, or 14.4 per cent, in its biggest one-day fall since 1988.
The company was followed down by London Stock Exchange Group, whose shares fell 12.8 per cent, wiping more than £5billion off its value.
The slump came after Anthropic introduced a tool on its Claude AI chatbot that it says can automate legal work by helping lawyers draw up briefs and review contracts.
The move raised fresh doubts over whether older software, data analytics and advertising companies ploughing money into AI can keep up with developments from fast-growing industry pioneers.
‘The software companies were assumed to be winners from AI,’ said Lars Skovgaard, senior investment strategist at Danske Bank.
Dumped: Heavy selling on the stock market saw data and analytics giant RELX shed nearly £7bn of its value or 14.4% in its biggest one-day fall since 1988
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‘But all of a sudden, you start to worry about whether you can earn the money back [from AI investments], or will you be outsmarted by updates coming in.’
Other London-listed blue-chips were caught up in the rout, with software group Sage plunging 9.8 per cent, education publisher Pearson down 7.7 per cent and data firm Experian off 6.8 per cent.
Troubled FTSE 250 ad group WPP sank 11.8 per cent. Gold, meanwhile, jumped to as much as $4,993 an ounce – its biggest daily rise since 2008.
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