The Importance of Professional-Grade Generative AI in Regulated Sectors

Professionals in highly regulated sectors including legal, tax and accounting, risk and fraud, and government regard generative AI with both optimism and caution.

Given the technology’s tremendous potential to boost efficiency, free up time for higher-level tasks, and spur innovation, nearly half of respondents to a survey published in Thomson Reuters Institute’s latest Generative AI in Professional Services report say they’re “hopeful” or “excited” about implementing GenAI.

Despite such promise, GenAI isn’t widespread in these sectors, where organizations’ leaders are unsure they can use its powerful capabilities safely, securely, and responsibly.

The key issue is trust. Leaders need to know GenAI will fulfill its extraordinary capabilities and strengthening their strategy and decision making, while keeping their highly sensitive data under lock and key, the foundation of any professional-grade solution.

And with GenAI already transforming business everywhere, organizations in regulated sectors need to trust that their GenAI solutions use reliable industry-leading data provide answers grounded in expertise and content relevant for their industry, keep proprietary information private and secure, protect their users against cybercrime and other risks, and integrate seamlessly into the platforms they already use so they can quickly realize its benefits. These critical components of trustworthy GenAI are the core makeup and promise of tools like CoCounsel, the professional-grade GenAI assistant from Thomson Reuters.

Growing Enthusiasm for GenAI

GenAI use is on the rise. While only 12% of regulated organizations are using it across their business, 43% are either planning to incorporate the technology or considering it for their business. Leaders are primarily interested in GenAI’s potential to improve efficiency and productivity, and some are looking forward to its capacity to drive innovation and growth, streamline work processes, assist with routine tasks, and transform their industry as a whole.

The use cases are numerous for GenAI tools for highly regulated sectors, such as the professional-grade CoCounsel from Thomson Reuters. A law firm might use GenAI to quickly review and summarize sophisticated documents at scale, conduct legal research, and draft intuitive and natural correspondence and briefs, freeing its workforce to focus on more complex tasks. A tax firm could apply GenAI for accounting and bookkeeping, conducting tax research and advice, and preparing tax returns. And corporate risk professionals could employ it for knowledge management, risk assessment and reporting, and finance operations.

Many professionals cite another factor in their enthusiasm: the inevitability that GenAI will proliferate. They believe organizations that don’t act quickly to experiment with the technology risk underperforming against their competitors or becoming obsolete. Perhaps that’s why almost half of professionals plan to use GenAI in their own work within the next three years, regardless of whether their employers have adopted it officially.

The Fears Holding Organizations Back

Despite their growing interest, many organizations in these regulated sectors are still cautious about moving ahead. Forty-five percent of respondents report they have no plans to use GenAI right now.

The primary hesitation around GenAI is whether they can trust it not to produce inaccurate outputs, or “hallucinations,” or allow them to unwittingly distribute misinformation, such as fake legal citations or faulty tax guidance.

Others worry the technology won’t deliver on its expected results, at least in the near term; that their sector will become over-reliant on GenAI; that GenAI tools will lack a necessary human touch; that the technology will cost jobs; or that bad actors will misuse it.

Professionals are rightly concerned about data privacy. The invaluable proprietary and confidential data they need to build robust and effective large language models (LLMs) must remain confidential and secure, and must uphold laws and regulations as they evolve in real time.

Proceeding with Caution

The underlying issue around GenAI among those who have adopted it and those who haven’t comes down to trust.

While a healthy dose of caution is understandable, GenAI is here to stay. Roughly three-quarters of those working in highly regulated sectors, especially in the legal field, believe they can apply GenAI to their work. And more than half believe its potential business impact when it comes to enabling cost savings, unlocking time for higher-order tasks, aiding in quality control checks, and assisting with decision making makes its adoption worthwhile.

To assuage any concerns about GenAI’s reliability and accuracy as a tool they can rely on, and one that protects their data, organizations in these sectors need confidence in their GenAI platform to help them conduct research and analysis with LLMs built on trustworthy data, to keep confidential information secure, and to integrate seamlessly into the infrastructure and platforms they already use.

Leaders and professionals in these regulated sectors shouldn’t underestimate GenAI’s transformative potential. While there is a need to proceed thoughtfully, failing to adjust quickly to the shift may present even greater risks than adopting and experimenting.

The momentum is growing. The most future-forward organizations are planning with and exploring GenAI now. That’s why it’s critical they can trust their GenAI solutions to give them game-changing insights at high volume and scale—and security that provides the data protection their sectors require.

Learn more in the 2024 Generative AI in Professional Services report from the Thomson Reuters Institute. Learn more about CoCounsel, the professional-grade GenAI assistant from Thomson Reuters, here.