CNBC and Josh Gerben Discuss JPMorgan’s Trademark Filing for “IndexGPT”

Earlier this month, the financial institution filed a trademark application to protect a ChatGPT-like A.I. software that would be able to select investments for customers.

CNBC discusses the implications of the trademark filing with Josh Gerben. 

JPMorgan might be the first financial institution aiming to release a product like this to its customers, according to Washington D.C.-based trademark attorney Josh Gerben.

“This is a real indication they might have a potential product to launch in the near future,” Gerben said.

“Companies like JPMorgan don’t just file trademarks for the fun of it,” he said. The filing includes “a sworn statement from a corporate officer essentially saying, ‘Yes, we plan on using this trademark.’”

Gerben added that the company will have to launch IndexGPT within about three years of approval and trademarks typically take about a year to be approved thanks to backlogs at the USPTO.

Trademark applications are typically vaguely written to give companies the broadest possible protections, according to Gerben. JPMorgan’s application does specify that the bank intends to use A.I powered by “Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) models.

“It’s an A.I. program to select financial securities,” Gerben said. “This sounds to me like they’re trying to put my financial advisor out of business.”

Source: Son, Hugh. https://www.cnbc.com. “JPMorgan is developing a ChatGPT-like A.I. service that gives investment advice’”. 25 May 2023.