PwC, the global professional services firm and one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, has reached an agreement with OpenAI, the artificial intelligence (AI) research organization, making PwC the first reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise, as well as the largest user of the product. Additionally, the firm is integrating ChatGPT into its workforce in the U.S. and U.K., including the recently announced ChatGPT-4o model and capabilities.
In a press release from Joe Atkinson, chief products and technology officer for PwC U.S., and Ben Higgin, head of technology and investments for PwC U.K., they said, “By embracing ChatGPT Enterprise across our workforce, we will bring our first-hand experience of our AI transformation to clients, complementing our audit, tax and consulting services with a broad array of business and industry solutions.” The release noted the applications would support tax return review, proposal response generation, software lifecycle assistants and dashboards.
GenAI is involved with 950 of PwC’s top 1,000 client accounts, and the agreement will allow these clients to purchase access to the tool through PwC. This latest agreement is a part of the firm’s three-year AI roadmap and $1 billion investment.
PwC’s bet on GenAI and its impact on CFOs and the finance function aligns with how much of the workforce is finding ways to use AI at work, even if finance teams are generally behind the rest of their organizations. According to Microsoft’s 2024 work trend index report, 75% of employees globally are using AI in some capacity.
And per a recent report from accounting-focused cloud services provider Rightworks, 73% of accounting firm leaders are not using AI in any way. Even as PwC pushes its ChatGPT chips to the middle of the table, CFO’s own poll of its subscribers to The Daily Balance indicated there will be a dramatic drop in AI enthusiasm over the next six to 12 months.
The rise in GenAI expectations, combined with numerous reports and surveys, indicate the Gartner hype cycle may be in full effect. OpenAI was created in 2015 to, according to its charter, develop “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work." Entire industries have sprung up to develop and support AI initiatives, and PwC’s announcement is elevating expectations.
There is an enthusiasm gap between GenAI headlines and expectations of accurate outcomes, and CFOs have valid reasons for concern. Aside from the more notable events such as cybersecurity breaches and deepfake fraud, GenAI adoption brings with it significant costs.
GenAI, by its nature, requires extensive ongoing — and increasing — costs in maintaining large language models (LLMs), compliance, ESG considerations and a parabolic increase in the number of employees who will increase the rate of queries over time. Additionally, ongoing experimentation is necessary to build a robust tool, which will continue to bend the cost upward at a nonlinear rate.