Gartner has released some numbers on AI usage they harvested from audit professionals and the headline figure shouldn’t surprise anyone: only 7% of those surveyed report they aren’t using AI at all. That leaves about 691 auditors who shared how they’re using AI, which we’ll get to in a minute.
The gist is:
While 93% of audit leaders report some level of AI use, only 38% have an AI strategy, according to a survey by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.
The webinar poll of 743 audit professionals, taken in 2026, revealed that generative AI (GenAI) use cases in internal audit center on isolated tasks, such as engagement preplanning, drafting audit issues, and reviewing drafts (see Table 1). Less than a third are using AI for audit testing (30%), and only a small fraction is applying AI to broader departmental activities such as quality assurance reviews (12%).
Let’s get Table 1 in here:
If you look closely at the bottom of the table, you’ll realize that these numbers could be skewed in favor of professionals who are embracing AI, possibly driving the overall AI use figure higher than it would be if you polled 743 audit professionals at random. We would expect people who attend a webinar entitled “Advancing AI in Audit: Prioritizing AI Use Cases” to be, at minimum, interested in AI if not fully down with implementing it and using it. No?
Gartner’s conclusion is that adoption is good and all but auditors could be doing more:
Gartner analysts say that while AI adoption in audit is high, many teams are still struggling to clearly define and communicate the value it delivers.
This means taking a deliberate approach that links AI initiatives to audit quality, consistency and risk insights. They said audit leaders should not just point to adoption levels or productivity gains as a measure of success.
“Focusing narrowly on productivity or adoption metrics risks underrepresenting and even missing out on AI’s potentially broader impact on audit outcomes and decision-making,” said James Bourke, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Risk & Audit Practice.
It goes without saying Gartner is selling an AI tool, so naturally they’d say that. Hey, we don’t hate the hustle.
The people running the large accounting firms have no idea what they’re doing and they are running the profession into the ground. They’re panicking over AI and throwing literally billions of dollars at it without having any vision for how it will actually work in reality. They call themselves leaders because they’re spending all this money on AI, but they are really just followers because they’re doing what everyone else is doing.
It continues to astonish me that a small handful of people (accounting firms) essentially have a cartel and they continue try to destroy each other rather than work to help everyone profit. The government literally requires by law the publicly traded companies get an annual audit and file tax returns, and yet the large accounting firms still can’t figure out how to make their business model work. Astonishing.