In 1971, programmer Ray Tomlinson sent himself the first email, probably unaware that his discovery would become a key communication tool for future generations. In millennium times, if a business didn’t have an email address to contact their customers, they weren’t following the tide leading to the era of digitization of communications over time.

Today, when consumers are looking for an instant service for their daily needs and transactions, the relevant task is to support live communication, known as chat. Chat is designed to meet the need for short-term and personalized real-time service from a dedicated support agent. As with email, which we all now take for granted as a way to communicate, it has taken companies a long time to realize its value as a channel of communication with their customers. Although chat first appeared as a form of communication for financial transactions (for example, in online stores) in the early 2000s, it took at least fifteen years to become a trend, initially for commercial transactions in consumer goods, as well as in the service industry. with noteworthy personal experience in the field of tax advisory services.

In an age of rapid technological development, the next step has already been taken with artificial intelligence. Chat applications are already being replaced by chat bot applications that perform the requested functions, imitating the written and spoken speech of a person as much as possible.

A recent and very popular solution is the well-known chatbot, which was developed based on supervised and reinforcement learning methods and quickly gained public attention for its detailed responses in a wide cognitive range, as well as for what a machine learning model is designed to manage. a large number of concurrent users. A second, equally popular platform is built on the same technology, using natural language processing, machine learning and legal data analysis to automate and improve various aspects of related work.

Of course, the effectiveness of such instruments has yet to be judged in practice, and the first signs of doubt are already being expressed. For example, in the case of the aforementioned chatbot, the comments are mostly about time-tested information that he saw in playback, since he is provided with information until 2021, while the reports say that the more up-to-date version of the recently app became available only for a limited the number of subscribers.

Notably, when asked in the app itself about efficiency in tax advisory services, the app responded that it does not have access to a database of tax regulations or laws, but it can still provide general information about tax issues, although they may not always be completely accurate. And finally, the application advised users to contact relevant tax consultants on related issues!

The fact is that the effectiveness of chatbots is probably still quite far from expectations, since human intelligence is always at a higher level. Of course, there are already reactions regarding the ethical dilemmas that arise in connection with the development of artificial intelligence, as well as the risks associated with the lack of an appropriate regulatory framework. In fact, Italy was the first in Europe to recently ban the app at the request of the Italian privacy authority, citing user security concerns. It was preceded by China, Iran, North Korea and Russia. Despite the backlash, it is probably a foregone conclusion that proponents of human communication will have to embrace technological advances. And especially if in the future it turns out that with constant training of chatbots on their own conversations with users, their effectiveness increases exponentially.

Ms. Antonia Plataki is the Senior Tax Manager at PwC Greece and is responsible for the tax chat service.