Deloitte goes all in on AI — despite having to issue a hefty refund for use of AI |

Professional services and consultant firm Deloitteannounced a landmark AIenterprisedeal with Anthropicthe same day it was revealed the company would issue a refund for a government-contracted report that contained inaccurateAI-producedslop.

The upshot: Deloitte’s deal with Anthropic is a referendum on its commitment to AI, even as it grapples with the technology. And Deloitte is not alone in this challenge.

The timing of this announcement is interesting —comical even. On the same day Deloitte toutedits increased use of AI,the Australia Department of Employment and Workplace Relations said theconsulting company would have to issue a refundfor a report it did for the department that included AI hallucinations, the Financial Times reported.

The department had commissioned a A$439,000 “independent assurance review” from Deloitte, which was published earlier this year. The Australian Financial Review reported in August the review had a number of errors, including multiple citations to non-existent academic reports. A corrected version of the review was uploaded to the department’s website last week. Deloitte will repay the final installment of its government contract, the FT reported.

TechCrunch reached out to Deloitte for comment and will update the article if the company responds.

Deloitte announcedMonday plans roll outAnthropic’schatbot Claude toitsnearly 500,000global employees on Monday. Deloitteand Anthropic, which formed a partnership last year,plan to create complianceproducts andfeatures for regulated industriesincludingfinancial services,healthcareand public services, according to anAnthropic blog post.Deloittealsoplans to create different AI agent “personas” torepresentthe different departments within the company including accountants and software developers,according to reporting from CNBC.

“Deloitte is making this significant investment inAnthropic’sAI platform because our approach to responsible AI is very aligned, and together we can reshape how enterprises operate over the next decade. Claude continues to be a leading choice for many clients and our own AI transformation,” Ranjit Bawa,globaltechnology andecosystemsandalliancesleader,at Deloitte wrote in the blog post.

The financial terms of the deal—which Anthropic referred to as an alliance—were notdisclosed.

The deal is not only Anthropic’slargest enterprisedeploymentyet, it also illustrates how AI is embedding itself in every aspect of modern life from tools used at work to casual queries made at home.

Deloitte is not the only company, or individual,getting caught using inaccurate AI-produced information in recent months either.

In May, the Chicago Sun-Times newspaperhad to admit that it ran an AI-generated list of booksfor its annual summer reading list after readers discovered some of the booktitles were hallucinated even if the authors were real.An internal document viewed by Business Insider showed Amazon’s AI productivity tool, Q Business, struggled with accuracy in its first year.

Anthropicitselfhasalsobeen knocked forusingAI-hallucinated informationfrom its own chatbotClaude.The AI research lab’s lawyerapologizedafterthe company used an AI-generated citationin a legal dispute withmusic publishersearlier this year.