PwC has announced that it will experiment with chatbot aimed at accelerating the work of its 4,000 lawyers, which is the latest sign that professional services firms are rushing to implement artificial intelligence (AI) in their operations.
A one-year contract with the startup Harvey will allow lawyers access to legal artificial intelligence, which PwC says will help them work faster on tasks such as contract analysis and conducting due diligence, reported the Financial Times.
The company also stated that it plans to find ways to utilize the services in its tax practice.
The alliance between PwC and Harvey is the latest example of a professional services firm experimenting with ‘generative’ artificial intelligence since the launch of ChatGPT. Harvey’s software is built using the latest OpenAI technology, GPT-4, which the company claims has far greater legal reasoning capabilities than its predecessor.
Carol Stubbings, head of PwC’s global tax and legal services division, stated that the technology ‘marks a significant shift in how tax and legal services will be delivered and utilized across the industry,’ reported FT.
The company said that the technology will accelerate decision-making by providing answers to questions, which staff will then review and augment.
Artificial brains are not a threat… Yet
Since the chatbot is capable of analyzing vast amounts of text and writing convincing answers to questions, it can also be used to summarize key clauses from series of contracts, PwC said, and to create initial due diligence reports based on lawyer instructions.
