Deloitte goes all in on AI — despite having to issue a hefty refund for use of AI

Professional services and consultant firm Deloitte announced a landmark AI enterprise deal with Anthropic the same day it was revealed the company would issue a refund for a government-contracted report that contained inaccurate AI-produced slop.  

The upshot: Deloitte’s deal with Anthropic is a referendum on its commitment to AI, even as it grapples with the technology. And Deloitte is not alone in this challenge.

The timing of this announcement is interesting — comical even. On the same day Deloitte touted its increased use of AI, the Australia Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said the consulting company would have to issue a refund for a report it did for the department that included AI hallucinations, the Financial Times reported.  

The department had commissioned a A$439,000 “independent assurance review” from Deloitte, which was published earlier this year. The Australian Financial Review reported in August the review had a number of errors, including multiple citations to non-existent academic reports. A corrected version of the review was uploaded to the department’s website last week. Deloitte will repay the final installment of its government contract, the FT reported.

TechCrunch reached out to Deloitte for comment and will update the article if the company responds.

Deloitte announced Monday plans roll out Anthropic’s chatbot Claude to its nearly 500,000 global employees on Monday. Deloitte and Anthropic, which formed a partnership last year, plan to create compliance products and features for regulated industries including financial services, healthcare and public services, according to an Anthropic blog post. Deloitte also plans to create different AI agent “personas” to represent the different departments within the company including accountants and software developers, according to reporting from CNBC.  

“Deloitte is making this significant investment in Anthropic’s AI platform because our approach to responsible AI is very aligned, and together we can reshape how enterprises operate over the next decade. Claude continues to be a leading choice for many clients and our own AI transformation,” Ranjit Bawa, global technology and ecosystems and alliances leader, at Deloitte wrote in the blog post.  

The financial terms of the deal — which Anthropic referred to as an alliance — were not disclosed.  

The deal is not only Anthropic’s largest enterprise deployment yet, it also illustrates how AI is embedding itself in every aspect of modern life from tools used at work to casual queries made at home.

Deloitte is not the only company, or individual, getting caught using inaccurate AI-produced information in recent months either. 

In May, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaper had to admit that it ran an AI-generated list of books for its annual summer reading list after readers discovered some of the book titles were hallucinated even if the authors were real. An internal document viewed by Business Insider showed Amazon’s AI productivity tool, Q Business, struggled with accuracy in its first year.

Anthropic itself has also been knocked for using AI-hallucinated information from its own chatbot Claude. The AI research lab’s lawyer apologized after the company used an AI-generated citation in a legal dispute with music publishers earlier this year.