NEW YORK, Dec 3 (Reuters) - Citadel, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Ken Griffin, has launched a new artificial intelligence-powered tool that aims to help investors conduct research on stocks faster and more efficiently, the firm's chief technology officer said on Wednesday.

The Citadel AI Assistant is a new chatbot tool that has been trained on licensed third-party content, including transcripts, regulatory filings, brokerage research reports and the hedge fund's own investment strategies, Citadel CTO Umesh Subramanian said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference in New York.

The tool can highlight risks and generate customized research and reading lists based on an investor's portfolio, thereby producing relevant information and content for investors in a fraction of the time it would take a human researcher, he said. 

The Citadel AI Assistant, which has been rolled out inside the firm over the past year, is now used regularly by nearly all of its equities investors, Subramanian said, adding that investment judgment still remains in human hands.

"I don't think just by using AI you're going to become a much better investor," Subramanian said. "But AI is a tool investors are going to use, and how you use it will drive performance."

At a JPMorgan investor conference on October 15, Griffin said that generative AI is not helping hedge funds produce market-beating returns and is yet to meaningfully impact the industry.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Citadel's flagship fund Wellington posted a 1.4% return in November, boosting the fund's performance for the year to 8.3%. Citadel currently has $71 billion in assets under management.

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