Consultants face backlash over AI plans

Louis GossMon, August 3, 2026 at 2:06 PM UTC

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All of the ‘big four’ consulting firms, including PwC, invest billions in AI technology - Yves Herman/Reuters

Management consultants are facing a backlash over plans to adopt AI, with the vast majority of customers saying they don’t trust the technology.

Some 70pc of consultancy clients said they wouldn’t trust a report if it was prepared using AI, according to a survey by Source Global Research.

Almost one third (32pc) of the 3,887 companies surveyed said their trust in a consultancy would be shaken by knowledge they had used AI to do their work.

It threatens a looming crisis for the world’s biggest consulting firms, which are investing heavily in AI while cutting back on human consultants.

All of the big four consulting firms – Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC – have significantly cut back their graduate recruitment schemes since the launch of ChatGPT, as they invest billions in AI technology.

More than three quarters of UK consulting firms are using AI to carry out work, according to a recent survey by the Management Consultancies Association (MCA).

Britain’s biggest consulting firms have also launched their internal AI tools to help automate their work. KPMG and PwC have struck deals with tech giants including Microsoft and OpenAI.

In 2023, PwC launched its own ChatPwC tool, which it described as an “AI-powered assistant” used to automate “repetitive and tedious tasks”.

AI errors

However, AI-related errors have caused a string of embarrassments for consulting giants.

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Several recent reports from PwC’s Middle East business on topics including AI and electric vehicles were discovered to be riddled with fake footnotes and unverifiable claims, according to a report from GPTZero.

PwC said it was “updating a limited number of supporting citations in the reports mentioned” and added that the partnership had “quality control processes for research and content development we expect all our people to adhere to”.

Deloitte separately said it would pay a partial refund to the Australian government after a A$440,000 (£230,000) report it wrote contained various errors that were blamed on AI.

Tamzen Isaacson, the chief executive of the MCA, said: “Firms investing in AI are reporting significant gains in productivity and service delivery.

“The real opportunity lies in combining the latest AI technologies with professional expertise, industry knowledge and human judgement.”

Embarrassing errors are only one of the threats AI poses to consultants.

Tech giants including OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Anthropic, the maker of Claude, have launched their own consultancies, focused on helping clients use AI tools. They threaten to compete directly with the traditional consulting firms.

At the same time, any efficiencies delivered by AI could prompt customers to ask for lower prices.

KPMG was revealed this year to have asked its own auditor, Grant Thornton UK, for a fee reduction, suggesting AI should make it cheaper to carry out the work. The negotiations led to KPMG paying $357,000 (£265,000) for its audit in 2025, compared with $416,000 the year before.

Deloitte was contacted for comment.

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Money”