Despite advanced automation, Intuit keeps human experts involved to ensure accuracy and personalized support.
Intuit has teamed up with Google Cloud to offer an AI-powered feature that automatically extracts information from 10 different types of tax forms to populate IRS tax returns.
Intuit, parent company of TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp, said that it is using Google's Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) models and Document AI tool to let users snap a photo of a tax form and upload it to TurboTax instead of doing manual entries.
"We know full well that TurboTax customers want to get their taxes done super-fast, and nobody wants to be typing numbers in," Ashok Srivastava, Intuit's chief data officer, told PYMNTS in an interview.
While Intuit has been working on this capability for the last seven years, it was able to accelerate the process and replace a lot of older technology through this collaboration with Google Cloud, Srivastava said.
As such, Intuit's use of Gemini and Document AI expands the auto-fill feature to more complex 1099 forms and tax form 1040, including schedules 1,2,3, A, C and E.
At the core of the integration is GenOS, Intuit's generative AI operating system. GenOS connects to various AI models, including Google's Gemini, to drive what Srivastava calls "done-for-you experiences."
Once a user uploads a document, GenOS sends it to Google's Document AI, which extracts the necessary information, categorizes it and fills out IRS forms within TurboTax.
While Intuit already uses bank connections to pre-fill data in TurboTax from 350 institutions, this new AI capability tackles a long-standing pain point: manually typing in figures from other paper or digital forms into tax returns.
The innovation is especially useful for self-employed individuals, gig workers or people who own real estate and receive 1099s that aren't automatically imported. Now, a quick photo is all it takes.
Read more: TurboTax Debuts Early Refund Tool for Tax Season
Accuracy is critical in finance. Asked how Intuit handles hallucinations, Srivastava said Intuit developed a system called GenSRF (security, risk and fraud) to monitor AI behavior and reduce errors and hallucinations. GenSRF tracks the input and output of large language models, ensuring that the information extracted and generated is correct.
However, humans remain in the loop.
"We don't just hand it over to the machines and use only technical capabilities. It's a combination of technical capabilities and process," Srivastava said. "As these capabilities scale, we don't just want to be looking at dashboards alone. We don't want to just have the machines monitoring themselves. We want humans in the loop also, and we are doing that."
Human intervention is seen in two places: the customer is notified before an action is taken, and during reinforcement learning with human feedback loops created in GenOS. Human workers monitor the data flows.
But with AI doing tax work, is there still a place for human tax experts in TurboTax's live assistance service? Srivastava said AI augments their skills so they can better serve the customer.
For example, when a TurboTax user doing taxes wants to talk to a live expert, AI routes and matches them to someone. The user's information is extracted and sent to the expert. As the conversation goes on, the AI takes notes, which are then sent to TurboTax databases. This data, along with that of millions of other taxpayers, is analyzed at scale.
Srivastava said what's also notable is that AI can forecast demand for these tax experts on a half-hour basis, "up to a year ahead of time. ... It's really quite remarkable."
Another reason why human tax experts aren't going away is that "People like to work with people," he said.
Read more: Intuit Says AI Will Make Small Business Back-Office Workflows More Intuitive
Intuit is also embracing agentic AI, which powers digital agents that can undertake specific tasks on behalf of users.
For example, in QuickBooks, these artificial intelligence agents send automatic invoice reminders to customers, increasing the likelihood of on-time payments and helping small businesses get paid faster.
Srivastava said Intuit's system uses a component called GenRuntime to orchestrate AI workflows. This allows different parts of GenOS to work together, including document analysis, cash flow forecasting and invoice reminders.
This saves small business owners from tasks like laborious follow-ups, which take time away from running their company.
Using AI agents, small business owners now get paid five days faster on average. Overdue invoices are also 10% more likely to be paid in full, thanks to timely nudges sent by AI agents that understand tone and urgency.
"The fact that people are getting paid faster, and they're more likely to be paid in full is just fantastic from a business standpoint," Srivastava said.
Asked what he would advise other business leaders leaning into AI, Srivastava shared the following tips:
