Auditor Makes 'Weird' Demand to Its Own Auditor Over AI

It's another AI head-scratcher, and once again it centers on the giant auditing firm KPMG. It seems the company complained to its own accountant that it should no longer have to pay as much for services because artificial intelligence is making the work easier, reports the Financial Times. In fact, KPMG threatened to replace Grant Thornton UK with a new firm unless it got a break, and the Times reports that the tactic worked: from $416,000 in 2024 to $357,000 last year. All of which strikes Matt Levine at Bloomberg as a little "weird," if not downright "crazy" on the part of KPMG.

After all, couldn't customers of KPMG now turn around and make the exact same argument of the auditing giant and demand lower fees?

• "'Ehh auditing can basically be done by AI so why should we pay for it' is not a crazy thing for most companies to think, or to say to their auditors, but it is a crazy thing for an auditing firm to say to its auditor," he writes. In fact, KPMG should pay Grant Thornton more, he suggests, and he offers this as a line of rationale it could pitch to the public: "In these crazy AI times, everyone needs to pay more for trusted human auditing; we'll go first."

In the earlier KPMG story, the company punished a partner who used AI to cheat on an AI training course.