Morgan Stanley is expanding the use of OpenAI-powered, generative artificial intelligence tools to its vaunted investment banking and trading division, CNBC has learned.

The firm, which first rolled out an AI assistant based on OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology to its wealth management advisors in early 2023, began rolling out another version called AskResearchGPT this summer in its institutional securities group, according to Katy Huberty, Morgan Stanley’s global director of research.

The tool lets users extract answers from across the universe of Morgan Stanley’s research — including on stocks, commodities, industry trends and regions — collapsing what could otherwise be the cumbersome task of gleaning insights from the over 70,000 reports produced annually by the bank.

“We see it as a game changer from a productivity standpoint, both for our research analysts and our colleagues across institutional securities,” Huberty said in an interview. The tool helps staff “access the highest quality, most insightful information as efficiently as possible.”

Since its arrival as a viral consumer app in late 2022, OpenAI’s generative AI technology has been swiftly adopted by Wall Street’s largest players.

Morgan Stanley says that close to half of its 80,000 employees are using generative AI tools created with OpenAI, while at rival JPMorgan Chase, about 60% of the firm’s 316,043 employees have access to a platform using OpenAI’s models, said a person with knowledge of the matter. The San Francisco-based startup recently raised money at a $157 billion valuation.

OpenAI already has network advantages in financial services because of its ample funding and early focus on use cases for banks, said Pierre Buhler, a banking consultant with SSA & Co.

“They are ahead of everyone else in terms of market penetration,” Buhler said.”But it is an emerging market, and we are still at the very beginning.” It’s likely that competitors to OpenAI such as Anthropic will gain use over time, he added.

At Morgan Stanley, a leader in global investment banking and trading along with JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, employees have gravitated toward AskResearchGPT, using it instead of getting on the phone or lobbing an email to the research department, Huberty said.

Employees are asking the tool three times the number of questions as compared to a previous tool based on traditional AI that’s been in use since 2017, according to the bank.

It’s most in-demand among salespeople and other client-facing staff who often field questions from hedge funds or other institutional investors, said Huberty.

“We found that it takes a salesperson one-tenth of the time to respond to the average client inquiry” using AskResearchGPT, she said.

LONDON — The U.K. is likely to see stablecoin laws introduced in a matter of “months, not years,” according to crypto firm Circle’s top policy executive.

Dante Disparte, Circle’s global head of policy, said that he sees the U.K. will soon bring in legislation for stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency that aims to maintain a constant peg to government currencies such as the U.S. dollar or British pound

“I think we’re within months, not years” of formal laws for the stablecoin market being introduced, Disparte told CNBC in an interview last week during a visit to London.

The Treasury and the Bank of England were not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Disparte suggested the U.K.’s lengthier approach to introducing laws targeted at crypto may have been a good thing given events that transpired in 2022, such as the collapse of FTX, a crypto exchange once worth worth $32 billion, as well as other industry crises.

“You could also look back, and I think many in the U.K. and in other countries would argue that they’re vindicated in not having jumped in too quickly and fully regulating and bringing the environment onshore because of all the issues we’ve seen in crypto over the last few years,” Disparte said.

However, he added that more recently, there’s been a sense of urgency to introduce formal regulations for stablecoins, as well as trading in digital assets and other crypto-related activities.

By not bringing forth stablecoin-specific rules, the U.K. would risk missing out on the benefits of the technology. He added that the U.K. has some catching up to do with the European Union, which has begun enforcing regulation of stablecoins under its MiCa, or Markets in Crypto Assets, regulation. Singapore has also agreed formal laws for the stablecoin industry.

“In the spirit of protecting the U.K. economy from excess risk and crypto, there’s also a point in time in which you end up protecting the economy from job creation and the industries of the future,” Disparte said. He stressed that “you can’t have the economy of the future unless you have the money of the future.”

Among the benefits cited by Disparte are innovation in the wholesale banking industry, real-time payments, and the digitization of the British pound.

Officials at the Bank of England are currently exploring whether or not to introduce a digital version of the pound, which has previously been dubbed “Britcoin” by the media.

Dante said he had met with officials from the Bank of England recently and was reassured by their approach to so-called central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs.

In April, the former government announced plans to become a “world leader” in the crypto space, outlining plans to bring stablecoins into the regulatory fold and consult on a regime for regulating trading of cryptoassets, like bitcoin.

Last October, Sunak’s administration issued a response to a consultation on regulation of the crypto industry, saying it would aim to introduce “phase 2 secondary legislation” in 2024, subject to parliamentary approval.

The new Labour government hasn’t been as vocal as the Conservatives were on crypto regulation. In January, the party released a plan for financial services, which included a proposal to make the U.K. a securities tokenization hub.

Securities tokens are digital assets that represent ownership of a real-world financial asset, such as a share or bond.

Stablecoins are a multibillion industry, worth more than $170 billion, according to CoinGecko data. Tether’s USDT token is the largest stablecoin by value, with a market capitalization of over $120 billion. Circle’s USDC is the second-largest, with the combined value of coins in circulation worth over $34 billion.

However, the market has been shrouded in controversies in the past. In 2022, Tether’s USDT dropped from its $1 peg after a rival stablecoin, terraUSD, collapsed to zero. The events raised doubts over whether USDT was truly backed 1:1 by an equal amount of dollars and other assets in Tether’s reserves.

For its part, Tether says its coin is backed by dollars and dollar-equivalent assets, including government bonds, at all times.