European publishing and legal software companies have suffered sharp declines in their share prices after the US artificial intelligence firm Anthropic revealed a tool for use by companies’ legal departments.
Anthropic, the company behind the chatbot Claude, said its tool could automate legal work such as contract reviewing, non-disclosure agreement triage, compliance workflows, legal briefings and templated responses.
Shares in the UK publishing group Pearson fell by 4% on the news, and shares in the information and analytics company Relx plunged 14%. The software company Sage lost 5.5% in London and the Dutch software company Wolters Kluwer lost 10.5% in Amsterdam.
Shares in the London Stock Exchange Group fell by 8.5%, its biggest drop in almost five years, and the credit reporting company Experian dropped by 8.9% in London, amid fears over the impact of AI on data companies.
Europe’s media stocks index is set for the biggest daily fall since March 2020, down 5%. Nasdaq-listed Thomson Reuters shares plummeted 14.2%.
The FTSE 100 had hit a record high on Tuesday morning but the sell-off dragged the blue chip index into the red.
Anthropic said the plugin did not provide legal advice. “AI-generated analysis should be reviewed by licensed attorneys before being relied upon for legal decisions,” the startup said.
The company also unveiled a number of other open-source tools to automate a range of professional activities, including sales and customer support.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, its chief executive, and other former staff members from OpenAI, which developed ChatGPT.
“Anthropic launched new capabilities for its Cowork to the legal space, heightening competition within the space,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note on Thomson Reuters. “We view this as a sign of intensifying competition, and thus a potential negative.”
The share price declines deal another severe blow to Nick Train, one of the UK’s most high-profile fund managers, whose firm Lindsell Train has run Finsbury Growth & Income Trust since 2000. The trust’s four largest holdings are Sage, Experian, London Stock Exchange and Relx and its shares fell more than 5% on Tuesday.
Train apologised again for the “dire” performance of the investment trust at its annual meeting last month, after surviving a vote on its future. The FTSE 250-listed company is the worst-performing UK equity income trust over one year and five years.
The news will reignite fears of job losses caused by the AI boom. Clifford Chance, one of the largest international law firms, said in November it was reducing the number of business services staff at its London base by 10%, citing increased use of AI as a factor behind the decision.
Along with factory jobs that can be automated, office-based jobs are seen as vulnerable to advances in AI – computer systems that perform cognitive tasks typically associated with human intelligence.
The UK is losing more jobs than it is creating as companies adopt more AI tools, and is being hit harder than rival large economies, according to a study by Morgan Stanley.
More than a quarter (27%) of UK workers are worried their jobs could disappear in the next five years as a result of AI, a recent survey of thousands of employees showed. It found that British businesses reported an average 11.5% increase in productivity aided by AI. US businesses reported similar gains, but created more jobs than they cut.
In his annual Mansion House speech last month, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, said AI could destroy swathes of jobs in the capital. He said London was “at the sharpest edge of change” because of its reliance on white-collar workers in the finance and creative industries, and professional services such as law, accounting, consulting and marketing.
Liz Kendall, the technology secretary, has also warned that “some jobs will go”, as she announced plans to train up to 10 million British workers, including members of the cabinet, in basic AI skills by 2030.
Lindsell Train and Nick Train have been contacted for comment.
