EY's global leadership team previewed new AI‑driven features on its Canvas audit platform, promising to slash risk‑assessment time, push relevant accounting guidance to staff, and auto‑populate work papers. The firm claims the May rollout will make audits not only quicker but also more thorough, boosting fraud detection and financial‑statement reliability for capital markets worldwide.

Across the Big Four, KPMG has already embedded AI into its Clara platform and is testing orchestration agents that choreograph multiple tools, freeing auditors for judgment‑heavy tasks and rapidly. Meanwhile the UK Financial Reporting Council finalized its first guidance on generative and agentic AI, flagging three failure modes: faulty output, misinterpretation and insufficient AI work. Regulator Mark Babington warned firms remain accountable under the new FRC guidance.

US regulators are scrambling to keep pace. A PCAOB task force last year proposed standardized work‑paper formats to let AI assist internal and external reviews, echoing the FRC’s call for iterative, non‑authoritative guidance. New chair Jim Logothetis, a former EY auditor, pledged to upgrade the agency’s technology and staff training despite budget cuts, signalling pressure on audit firms in the near term for investors.