Accounting firms are very aware of their obligations to protect client confidential information.
Many firms have policies to protect client-sensitive data by requiring their accountants to:
There can be weaknesses in this approach.
It is common and sensible for accounting firms to mandate that the team does not use free AI platforms.
A key weakness exists with this approach if firms don't provide a quality AI alternative for their team to use.
This is because accountants know that AI can greatly assist their work and if they don't have access to AI from the firm they might be incentivised to circumvent bans by using AI on their phone and other devices.
This is called shadow use of AI.
Another common and sensible policy is to mandate that accountants do not include client-sensitive information in their interactions with AI.
A flaw with this approach is that whilst the policy is good we all know that people don't always follow policies.
It doesn't require an intentional breach of policy to expose clients' personally identifiable information to AI. It may happen by accident, such as when an accountant is rushing to complete a job and forgets to redact confidential information before submitted to an AI.
When an accounting firm gives SavvyWise to their accountants, it strengthens protection against these weaknesses.
Accountants have access to an AI that can assist with general-purpose AI tasks such as assisted writing, idea generation and creating Excel formulas. In addition, accountants have a powerful AI assistant for tax and business compliance research. This reduces the incentive for accountants to use unauthorised AI.
Most importantly, SavvyWise has been designed with protection measures intended to reduce the risk of exposing client-sensitive data to unauthorised entities. Our system will NOT use your inputs for training AI data models.
For completeness, this means client information will NEVER be incorporated into AI data models where it could potentially be accessible to others outside of your firm.