The Big Four firms are now integrating a new category of artificial intelligence (AI) into their businesses, according to Bloomberg Tax.
Deloitte and Ernst & Young (EY) stated on March 18 that they are using new autonomous AI tools that are capable of assisting clients in routine tasks such as uploading documents for tax returns while taking on more complex work analyzing financial statements. The technology is within the agentic AI category, Bloomberg Tax reports.
Deloitte said that its Zora AI is an AI platform that provides a suite of "ready-to-deploy agents that perceive, reason and act," independently executing complicated business functions quickly and accurately. The AI aids clients in enhancing their workforce and improving productivity and efficiency.
Similarly, EY also said that the initial wave of deployment will have a workforce integration of AI agents and tax professionals created to exceed 3 million tax compliance deliverables and redefine over 30 million tax processes in the coming year.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) has also developed such capabilities, which are known as agents, to accelerate software development while tailoring guidance for auditors. Meanwhile, KPMG is developing “digital teammates” to support groups throughout its global business.
The moves are a new milestone in the Big Four's technology initiatives. Together, they have allotted billions to integrate AI into core platforms and guide their blue-chip clients to making the most of AI, Bloomberg Tax reports.
According to the separate releases, both EY and Deloitte have formed partnerships with Nvidia Corp., combining Nvidia’s AI architecture with their own data and technical tax law and accounting standards expertise. The aim is to accelerate common, manual and time-consuming tasks such as researching how foreign tax rules apply to a client.
Their launch announcements happened at the same time with Nvidia’s annual developer conference, called the “Super Bowl of AI.”
The latest tools based on agentic AI are intended to give employees added time for more complicated tasks instead of replacing them. The downside, according to Bloomberg Tax, is that this move could dampen the need for more staff going forward.
In an interview with Bloomberg Tax, Raj Sharma, global managing partner for growth and innovation at EY, noted that AI agents will immediately deliver productivity boost to EY teams. “When they are going to the clients, now they are equipped with 100 years of knowledge in that particular domain at their fingertips.”
Agentic AI is built on the content creation capabilities of its predecessor generative AI, which was the technology behind ChatGPT and other platforms. Content generator models have the ability to provide a list of ideas that can be utilized for research or drafting client emails.
However, this latest iteration of AI performs tasks requiring minimal intervention from humans, stated Subodha Kumar, a business data science professor at Temple University. “Agentic AI as a model is designed to solve the problem for you,” Kumar said. “It is based on the end goal.”
With an allotment of $1.4 billion, EY is set to roll out as many as 150 different agents in the upcoming three months to 80,000 tax professionals throughout the globe, Sharma said.
EY elected to deliver the new autonomous AI tools to its tax practice partly due to its extensive in-house tax data and the different global clients' needs, he said.
Deloitte’s early agents are created to be utilized by their finance teams for tasks like managing business expenses. According to the firm's release, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is already using Zora AI for financial statement analysis, scenario modeling and competitive and market analysis.
The firm set aside $3 billion in 2024 to build out AI solutions and relationships with tech giants including Google and Nvidia.
According to Bloomberg Tax, KPMG has said that it is building agents for both its professionals and its clients, emphasizing customer service and quality, among other focus areas.
PwC has also teamed up with Microsoft Corp. and Salesforce to build agents for its clients and announced a similar partnership with Oracle Corp. on Thursday.
Bloomberg Tax reports that agentic AI technology is intended to supplement, but not replace the need for human workers. However, the digital agents are taking on work now shouldered by thousands of Big Four employees and may mean firms will not have to add to their workforce as easily in the future.
At KPMG, staff will be paired with what David Rowlands, the firm’s AI global head called a workforce “that ignores siloes, borders, politics and never sleeps.”
In a statement, Deloitte noted that the agents would "liberate thousands of hours of effort a year for Deloitte’s finance team, reducing costs by 25 percent and increasing productivity by 40 percent," adding that it intends to implement its AI for thousands of users by the end of this year.
EY staff will be able to serve a bigger client roster than they already have with the help of agentic AI. As the firm expands, that AI-powered workforce will not need to grow as quickly, Sharma noted.
All four firms’ AI commitments include workforce training to prepare teams not only to utilize AI but also to stay ahead of the fast-paced tech and their clients' needs.
In spite of the promise to boost productivity, the models risk returning the same answers repeatedly, limiting creativity and the profession’s ability to adapt to shifting regulations and market developments, noted Nicole Wright, an associate accounting professor at James Madison University. However, she also said that she is optimistic that skilled accountants will still be in demand.