Responsible AI governance at Intuit

At Intuit, we understand the tremendous potential that AI has to help solve our customers’ most pressing needs. Our AI-powered platform innovations can help consumers make smart money decisions and help businesses run and grow. 

We're deeply committed to our customers, our employees, and the communities we serve. That's why we're dedicated to using AI in a thoughtful and responsible way that helps power prosperity around the world. We've been on this AI journey for over a decade, and our values and commitment to Integrity Without Compromise have guided our every step. We’re invested in being transparent about our approach in this rapidly evolving area. That’s why we published our responsible AI principles, which guide how we operate and scale our AI-driven expert platform with velocity and in a responsible manner. These principles are operationalized through our multi-layered governance framework, which helps us proactively identify and mitigate potential negative or unintended impacts that could result from our use of AI.

Intuit’s Responsible AI team has established enterprise-wide governance practices that align with our responsible AI principles, aim to address existing and emerging legal requirements, and take into account industry standards and best practices. Our multidisciplinary and cross-functional team includes people with expertise in data privacy, AI, data science, engineering, product management, legal, compliance, security, ethics, and public policy. Together, this group operationalizes our responsible AI governance framework and risk management program. This group also engages with external stakeholders, such as those from government, standards setting organizations, and nonprofits, to share learnings and promote responsible AI practices.

We designed our AI governance program to help identify risk and prevent potential harm to our customers, workers, and communities we serve from our use of AI. We comply with the law and are aligning our program with the voluntary National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) AI Risk Management Framework. We stay up to date with advancements in this space and are continuously adapting our program to assess emerging industry standards, best practices, and evolving legal requirements. Our Responsible AI team coordinates with other risk management teams (e.g., incident management, security, privacy, regulatory compliance, enterprise risk management, and third-party risk management) to align and complement our AI governance program with other risk management frameworks to help ensure we have harmonized controls across our risk functions.  

Our holistic approach to responsible AI governance includes:

1. Training and awareness: All Intuit employees are responsible for working in accordance with our values and responsible AI principles. We raise employee awareness of responsible AI practices and our internal review process through activities such as training, internal forums, internal communications resources, and more.
2. Executive level oversight: To provide oversight and help ensure that our teams are delivering AI experiences in line with Intuit’s principles and values, we have an AI Governance Committee. The committee includes senior executives with multidisciplinary backgrounds who lead our data, legal, technology, communications, cybersecurity and people and places teams. Governance Committee participants also include leaders, subject matter experts, and working teams across different disciplines, including privacy, information security, ethics, data science, engineering, product management, legal, and public policy. The Audit and Risk Committee of our Board of Directors has oversight of our Responsible AI program as part of its oversight of our overall compliance program.
3. Risk-based review and testing: Many of our AI features are designed to simplify our customers’ lives — like automatically categorizing expenses, providing insights to help them make smart financial decisions, and automating small business accounting processes. Prior to releasing AI-powered experiences to our customers, our review process is designed to identify AI use cases that require heightened review based on the level of risk. Use cases with the potential for risk of harm to individuals’ fundamental rights would undergo a higher level of review by cross-functional stakeholders. When determining what constitutes a heightened risk, we consider factors like the potential impact to our customers, applicable laws, and the nature of the data involved. For example, the use of AI in lending decisions is subject to a heightened level of review and additional safeguards. We test our AI experiences to ensure our AI is acting as intended and to the benefit of our users, and in compliance with applicable law.
4. Transparency: We prioritize transparency and tailor our approach based on the specific use case of our AI and its potential effects on our customers. We describe how AI is supporting and benefiting our customers throughout our product pages. We also make it clear to customers when they are interacting with Intuit Assist, our GenAI powered assistant, and we inform customers and experts when it's important for them to review AI generated content. In some cases, we provide customer-facing explanations to help them understand outcomes generated by AI. For example, TurboTax’s ExplainWhy feature gives personalized explanations of the “why” behind tax deductions, credits, and tax refunds.
5. Monitoring and feedback: We monitor our AI to help ensure Intuit experiences operate as intended. We also provide mechanisms for users to provide feedback about our AI features to help our teams assess and address potential issues. Customers and members of the public can provide feedback, ask questions, or raise concerns about our responsible AI principles or practices by contacting the Intuit Integrity Line. 

All Intuit products, including our AI-powered platform innovations, are built with our strong commitment to data privacy, security, and responsible AI governance. We implement technical and organizational safeguards to help protect customer data and protect privacy using industry-leading technology and practices. We’re transparent about our data practices and process personal data in alignment with our privacy statement, and applicable law. We train our AI with Intuit’s proprietary data — for example, our knowledge articles, help content, and customer data as described in our Global Privacy Statement. Customers can learn about their privacy choices at Intuit’s Privacy Center.

Rapid advancements in AI are bringing beneficial innovations to consumers and businesses but can come with new challenges. Intuit believes in working with external stakeholders such as government, industry, academia, and others to develop best practices, standards, and tools to address the potential impacts of AI. For example, we work with the Partnership on AI and have collaborated with NIST in the Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC). Through these and other efforts, we share learnings and actively contribute to the development of scalable responsible AI best practices. 

Intuit is committed to being a responsible and respected corporate citizen and a global thought leader in our engagement in the external public policy process in the countries where we have employees, products, and services, and where public policy affecting our business is created. Our engagement is covered by our Code of Conduct and Ethics and at all times reflects the principles of Intuit's Corporate Values, beginning with Integrity Without Compromise.

Intuit regularly evaluates its priorities and public policies most important to our ability to serve small and mid-market businesses, self-employed individuals, and consumers and to ensure business continuity. We believe AI can help level the playing field for consumers and small and mid-market businesses by giving them the tools to help them make insightful financial decisions and be more efficient. That’s why we educate global policymakers on the benefits of AI and how Intuit is operationalizing our responsible AI principles. We are known for bringing the voices of our small business customers to discussions about AI regulation through our Intuit Small Business Council, making us unique among many of our peers.

Learn more about political accountability and public policy advocacy here.