Big Four style AI lands in audits
EY rolled out agentic AI tools across its global assurance practice, making AI agents available to assurance professionals on thousands of engagements to accelerate document review and risk scoping. That move raises the baseline expectation for audit technology while inspection findings still ticked up slightly in IFIAR’s 2025 survey—so speed alone won’t replace disciplined methodology. For internal audit and co‑sourcing discussions, the story is both a capability shift and a quality reminder. (CFO Tech News, Accounting Today, Thomson Reuters/IFIAR)
EY just put artificial intelligence agents inside the software its auditors already use, so document review and risk spotting are no longer side experiments on a few pilot teams. The rollout sits inside EY Canvas, the firm’s global audit platform, and EY said it will support about 160,000 audit engagements. (ey.com) An audit is a check on whether a company’s financial statements match the evidence underneath them. In practice, that means reading contracts, tracing invoices, testing journal entries, and deciding which areas look risky enough to deserve more work. (accountingtoday.com) EY’s new setup uses multiple software agents, which are programs assigned to separate tasks instead of one chatbot doing everything at once. EY said those agents can pull data, review documents, and help scope risk areas before human auditors decide what to test. (ey.com) The scale is the part competitors will notice. EY said its platform already processes more than 1.4 trillion lines of journal entry data a year, and the new agent framework is being embedded across its worldwide assurance practice rather than sold as a limited add-on. (cpapracticeadvisor.com) The plumbing under this matters too. EY said the system is integrated with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Foundry, and Microsoft Fabric, which means the firm is tying audit workflows to Microsoft’s cloud and data stack instead of treating artificial intelligence as a separate app. (internationalaccountingbulletin.com) EY is also pairing the software launch with a broader “modernized audit approach,” not just a faster search box. Its April 7, 2026 announcement said the artificial intelligence rollout is part of a multibillion-dollar investment in audit quality, technology, and staff under the firm’s “All in” strategy. (ey.com) That timing is awkward in one specific way. On April 1, 2026, the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators said the share of inspected audits with at least one finding rose to 34% in its 2025 survey, up from 33% in the prior survey. (ifiar.org) The International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators is the group that collects inspection results from watchdogs in dozens of countries, so its survey is one of the clearest cross-border scorecards for audit quality. In the 2025 survey, 50 jurisdictions contributed data on inspections of firms tied to the six largest global audit networks. (ifiar.org) The survey also shows where audits still break down. The highest rates of findings were in auditing accounting estimates, internal control testing, and revenue recognition, which are exactly the areas where speed helps less than judgment. (tax.thomsonreuters.com) So the near-term change is not “machines replace auditors.” The nearer change is that first-pass work like reading large document sets, summarizing exceptions, and mapping risk will get faster, while partners and regulators will judge firms on whether the final methodology still holds up under inspection. (businessinsider.com, ifiar.org) For companies that buy internal audit help or co-sourced audit support, this resets the sales pitch. “We use artificial intelligence” is becoming table stakes at Big Four scale, and the harder question is whether the tool changes testing quality, review discipline, and documentation in a way an inspection team would actually accept. (accountingtoday.com, tax.thomsonreuters.com)
