Sep 06, 2024 | AI

Female tech leaders were critical to the launch of Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel, which enables tax professionals to leverage the transformative capabilities of GenAI. Using large language models (LLMs) to provide an intuitive interface, it allows tax professionals to pose questions about complex tax research in everyday language. We hear from five Thomson Reuters leaders who helped bring this innovative solution to tax research. 

Foundation of enterprise-wide innovation 

Maria Apazoglou, head of AI, BI & Data Platforms, Technology, recalled early efforts to create a GenAI platform within Thomson Reuters, upon which the company’s GenAI-powered solutions – including Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel – would be built.  

“Our GenAI platform is designed to democratize access to AI, making it easier for non-technical users to utilize AI effectively,” Apazoglou explained. “In the creation of the platform, we focused on two critical aspects: developing a multi-cloud platform to support various AI models and LLMs, and creating an accessible interface to allow users to self-serve, enabling early experimentation and viability assessment.” 

This approach facilitated rigorous testing by developers and evaluation by subject matter experts (SMEs), ensuring optimal model performance. Today, the platform has 10,000 internal users monthly – equal to 40% of the population of Thomson Reuters 25,000 colleagues. 

Bridging content and customer needs  

When it comes to responsible AI, human-in-the-loop is critical to Thomson Reuters strategy, with considerations at every stage of design, development and deployment.  

The company has a team of hundreds of tax and accounting experts – many of whom are attorneys and CPAs themselves. These SMEs are critical to enhancing the quality of the responses produced by the GenAI models and to creating a system that meets customers’ needs. Evaluating results and grading answers is an ongoing and constant process.  

Catherine Murray, director of Editorial, US Tax & Accounting Commentary, coordinated the SME grading efforts, working with Thomson Reuters developers to interpret the results. She channeled her expertise in tax law, along with her understanding of customers’ needs, into ensuring that the models provided valuable and accessible responses.  

“Working closely with Thomson Reuters Labs team to conduct experiments and optimize the solution for large language models was an exciting part of the work,” she said. “Thinking about how customers are going to use the solution to surface our high-quality content was fascinating to be involved in, particularly as GenAI tech is evolving all the time.” 

Melissa Oaks, director of Editorial, Current Awareness, noted the excitement from customers during the alpha and beta testing phases. “Customers were eager to keep the beta version and asked, ‘When can I buy it?’ It’s thrilling to work on something that has such a significant impact on their daily lives,” Oaks remarked.  

Oaks noted that other solutions on the market rely on “just the tax code or the primary sources, and that’s really not enough to do tax research.” She said: “What I love about this solution is we’re providing professional insights and step-by-step guidance on how to actually go do what we’re saying is the recommended course of action, not just the primary sources. This comprehensive approach sets us apart in the market.” 

Transformative time-savings 

Nancy Hawkins, vice president of Product Management, Research, underscored the product’s potential to alleviate industry pressures: “With current tax staffing shortages, our solution offers crucial time-savings and work augmentation, especially for non-attorney professionals conducting tax research. It’s helping customers gain more capacity, whether for work-life balance or business growth.” 

“The exacting nature of the tax profession means mistakes can have significant consequences, and our customers are hungry for solutions that can bring them time-savings and augment their work,” Hawkins said.  

Delivering accuracy, efficiency, and simplicity 

Erica Butcher, vice president of Sales & Retention – Strategic Firms, noted the industry’s cautious optimism towards GenAI.  She said tax professionals are “both cautious and hopeful” about GenAI, and they are looking to the tech to deliver accuracy, efficiency, and simplicity. 

“Overall, we are mainly hearing excitement from customers about the potential for GenAI to support top priorities of improving efficiency and addressing the current talent shortage we’re seeing across tax and accounting,” Butcher said. “We’ve really listened to our customers, and we built this solution with our customers’ feedback and needs in mind to ensure Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel can deliver meaningful, measurable results.” 

For more on Checkpoint Edge with CoCounsel, visit this site or check out this demo video.