AI has arrived for finance research, and data vendors cannot police it

Four fields already have systems that run most of the research loop. The last obstacle was software with no API, and agents now operate that too.

OSWorld tests an agent on real desktop work: browsers, spreadsheets, office files, a code editor. When it launched, its authors reported that humans completed 72.36% of tasks and the best model 12.24%. On 9 October 2026 the board had a general-purpose model at 86.0%. An agent can now use a terminal, a portal or a web query form about as well as a research assistant can.

Licenses forbid it in plain words

Vendors and publishers wrote AI bans into their contracts, and university libraries now publish the terms.

Source	What it says
University of Waterloo Libraries	Agreements with publishers “do not allow sharing licensed materials with third parties,” including generative AI services. Breaches “can result in loss of access for individual users or the entire campus”
American University Library	Contracts “explicitly forbid uploading, processing, or otherwise using the content in AI systems.” This applies to all AI tools, including the ones the university licenses

A vendor cannot tell an agent from you

1. The agent is you. An agent that works inside your own licensed session sends the requests you would send, from your machine, under your login. On the vendor’s side there is one user.
2. Detection looks for volume. The controls vendors have are built to catch bulk downloading. Agent use does not need to look different from a heavy human user.
3. Local models leave no trace. When the model runs on the researcher’s own machine, nothing goes to a third party and nothing is observable from outside.
4. Only crude use leaves a mark. Early image generators gave themselves away with six-fingered hands, and sloppy AI text still does the same with stock phrases and invented citations. Competent use has no tell. A coefficient, a table or a clean paragraph does not show how it was produced.

Vendors are changing the price and the contract

Move	Where it shows
Build the sanctioned door and charge for it	Connectors and apps inside Claude and ChatGPT from FactSet, S&P Capital IQ, MSCI, LSEG, Moody’s and others (our map)
Tie access to identity	OpenAI’s shared sign-in work with S&P Capital IQ, LSEG, MSCI, Dow Jones Factiva and Moody’s, so a provider recognizes the user’s entitlement
Price by call in place of price by seat	Metered access makes it possible. Expect it at renewal
Put the risk on the institution	Campus-wide loss of access for one person’s breach, as Waterloo’s wording already says

The license still binds you

The license binds you whether or not the vendor can see the agent, and the penalty lands on your whole institution. The licensed data guide sets out what you may do.

The researchers who lose here are the ones who do nothing: no agents because the rules look frightening, no conversation with the library, no say in the next contract. Their colleagues at schools that negotiated agent use will be running pipelines they are not allowed to build.