At the Forefront of Billing for AI, PwC Gets in Bed with OpenAI

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez
PwC Chad

If any article needs the PwC Chad image, it’s this one

As Big 4 firms scramble to be the fastest, trustiest, and billing-est firm in the race to monetize generative AI, PwC announced today it is not only ChatGPT’s biggest enterprise customer, it will be shilling the service to clients.

It’s giving Hair Club For Men (I’m really dating myself with that reference aren’t I?).

Said PwC in the press release:

The power of generative AI (GenAI) is already reshaping our work environments and daily lives, signifying a decisive tipping point. Recognizing the immense potential of AI, we have strategically invested in this area for years.

Citation needed on years. I did dig up this CIO Dive article from last year containing an interview with Scott Likens, Global AI and Innovation Technology lead at PwC and certified hipster beardo. It says:

PwC has invested in AI for years and in generative AI from a research and development perspective since the transformer architecture was invented in 2017, Likens said. When the current wave of enthusiasm hit, the company wanted to treat itself as client zero, which meant taking a hands-on approach to fine-tuning tools, frameworks and training programs.

Last year, just as the AI buzz was really heating up, PwC announced it would invest a billion dollars over three years to “expand and scale its artificial intelligence offerings and help clients reimagine their businesses through the power of generative AI.”

Said PwC of the OpenAI deal, the firm will be the first reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise ever — not just the first Big 4 firm, the first company of any category — and the largest user of the product. Rather than speaking in nebulous terms that sound cool but don’t tell us much about actual applications, they chose to describe two specific ways in which they’re using GenAI right now. Props to them for that.

[W]e are already developing custom GPTs to help our workforce with reviewing tax returns, proposal response generation, software lifecycle assistants, dashboard and report generation and more. These practical applications demonstrate how PwC will leverage GenAI solutions to help solve complex business problems.

We are actively engaged in GenAI with 950 of our top 1,000 US consulting client accounts alongside discussing the use and implications of AI with many of our audit clients, emphasizing the near universal demand across industries for the transformative power of this technology.

Just going to drop this link here in case we need it later. No reason.

Digging around on PwC’s website, we find a few more quantified examples of how the firm is using AI internally to get shit done.

  • IT: 20% to 50% productivity gains in software development processes. Software development is critical to our operations. Our in-house teams develop the applications that make our firm run — and help clients develop customized software too. GenAI has revolutionized how our development teams work: Customized tools help synthesize data, complete and review code, generate documentation, conduct fast, granular troubleshooting (through root cause analysis) and more.
  • Finance: 20% to 40% productivity gains in accounting and tax. Data analysis, document summarization and generation, chat-based Q&A and more are all faster — thanks to a mix of specialized GenAI tools. For example: one GenAI tool now enables our finance function to create first drafts of new contracts and extract key information from existing ones within seconds.
  • Marketing: 20% to 30% productivity gains from our specialized GenAI model to help generate marketing content, and from firmwide models to automate documentation of work processes, review documents for risks, summarize and analyze documents and audio, and enable Q&A access to data analysis. Our people create our marketing — GenAI is helping them produce it more quickly and making it more data-driven and customized.

Added the firm in today’s announcement:

We have entered the ‘prove it’ phase, where we are actively demonstrating the capabilities and benefits of GenAI. We have already identified over 3,000 internal GenAI use cases, which is driving an end-to-end transformation within our own business and represents endless potential applications for clients across various industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, hospitality and more. We are taking a holistic approach and leveraging our deep industry experience to help transform our clients with AI, linking sources of value to common AI patterns to drive increased impact. This approach enables our clients to achieve faster outcomes with greater productivity, consistency, and efficiency.

We’d love to see the financial details of this deal, alas none are given so we’ll just have to use our imaginations.

PwC is accelerating adoption of AI with ChatGPT Enterprise in US and UK and with clients [PwC]

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Is Madoff’s Auditor Spilling His Guts?

Maybe! David Friehling was supposed to be sentenced last week but apparently it got pushed back again.

On November 3, 2009 Friehling pleaded guilty to various charges ranging from securities fraud to filing false reports to the SEC. He was to be sentenced for these crimes in February 2010 but because of his cooperation with the government, that was postponed until September 2010….that was then postponed until March 15, 2011….now that has been postponed until September 16, 2011. […] So what does a guy know who claims he did not know a lot? Is Friehling working with the Feds and Irving Picard (Madoff Trustee) on strong-arming Mets’ owners Saul Katz and Fred Wilpon? I doubt it. Can Friehling put a finger on one of the Bernard Madoff family members, who have yet to be charged criminally? Maybe.

Of course this could mean that Friehling also knows the location Jimmy Hoffa, the true identities of the participants in the Kenneday assassination and the Coke formula. Oh wait, everyone knows that one now. ANYWAY, the investigators may just be enjoying the anecdotes and would hate to see the poor guy shipped upstate. But most likely, he’s trying to save his ass from a sentence in FPMITAP like his #1 client received.

Giving Friehling the benefit of the doubt, he is cooperating to do the right thing now but he is also trying to get his sentence reduced in the process. With a fraud so large, I do not see how the Federal Sentencing Guidelines keep this guy in prison for less than 20 years.

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Of interest is how the tribunal will decide, “what responsibilities partners at a professional services firm have when one of their number displays signs of stress or becomes mentally ill but wishes to remain in the partnership.” This seems odd primarily because most partners are constantly showing signs of stress and if they’re not, one just assumes they’re mentally ill.


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3 thoughts on “At the Forefront of Billing for AI, PwC Gets in Bed with OpenAI”

  1. All the partners at the large accounting firms constantly masturbate at the thought of AI replacing all their staff to increase their profits (and not have to deal with pesky employees anymore who always want stuff like fair pay, good benefits and to be treated with respect), and they don’t give the slightest shit that they might be destroying the long-term viability of their firms and the accounting profession. They gonna get theirs, and fuck y’all.

    This is the current state of our profession…and America.

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