Big Four accounting firm PwC US will invest $1 billion over the next three years to expand how its tax accountants, auditors, and consultants use artificial intelligence to improve the work they do for clients, the firm announced Wednesday.
“It’s a huge priority for us both in the US and globally. It reflects where business is going and it reflects where we think the trends are going,” said Joe Atkinson, PwC’s chief products and technology officer.
The investment—which involves a partnership with Microsoft Corp—aims to cut down on busywork so employees can focus on tasks that needs expert eyes. The goal is to use technology to provide people the tools “that unlock their capabilities so we can either shorten their day, or we can improve the quality of their outcomes—or ideally both,” Atkinson said.
PwC will use Microsoft tools including OpenAI’s GPT-4/ChatGPT and Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. The firm already uses Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Serivce for clients in the insurance, aviation, and healthcare industries. In the expansion, it plans to use AI across all of its business lines and will train its 65,000 employees on using it, the firm said.
For auditors, artificial intelligence tools can help them spot anomalies or outlier transactions in a trove of financial data so they can ask questions and dig deeper. The same goes for the work done tax accountants. Being able to use AI to sift through potentially thousands of general ledger transactions for a large multinational company would save time and money, Atkinson said.
“The ability to get through that data quickly and accurately and to understand that data rapidly, we think that’ll be a massive assist,” he said.
Artificial intelligence tools also could help accountants and advisers write first drafts of position papers and memos.
“If I have a great tax accountant or a great tax adviser, I want them thinking about the position, thinking about the support for the position, and the regulatory requirements and obligations they have,” he said. “I don’t necessarily need them to be artful in paragraph three versus paragraph four.”
The firm, also known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, in March announced a chatbot service for its lawyers through AI startup Harvey.
Fellow Big Four accounting firm KPMG on April 23 announced that it would incorporate artificial intelligence technology into its global audit platform through a collaboration with software company MindBridge Analytics Inc.
Through the alliance, KPMG auditors will benefit from MindBridge’s AI-embedded audit intelligence tools, visualized analytics, and resources to perform risk analyses and assessments, the firm said.
PwC reported more than $50 billion in worldwide revenue in 2022.
Source: Bloomberg
