The Future of Audit is AI-Powered – But Must be Human-Led

AI is going to reshape audit and assurance, but not in the simplistic way people often describe.

The future isn’t “AI replaces auditors.” It’s “AI changes the operating model of evidence review, workflow intelligence, and audit quality – while increasing the importance of human judgment.”

The recent report that RSM is cutting hundreds of roles, including junior audit and assurance staff, has sparked an important conversation across the professional services sector. As AI becomes more capable, firms have a real opportunity to rethink how work gets done, how talent is developed, and how clients receive value. The firms that get this right won’t simply digitize old processes. They will combine AI with experienced human judgment to make audits faster, more comprehensive, and ultimately more valuable.

That is the opportunity we see every day at Thoropass. We believe deeply in AI and are using it to improve the speed, transparency, and consistency of the audit experience. But we aren’t treating AI as a replacement for auditors. We are building an AI-powered audit lifecycle platform that combines evidence workflows, continuous validation, operational visibility, and experienced professionals.

That combination matters, because technology alone doesn’t create trust, and humans alone can’t scale trust efficiently. The future belongs to firms that can integrate people, process, and technology effectively – and evolve those layers quickly as customer expectations and risks change.

Read more: The State of Cybersecurity Audits in 2026: Why AI Is Changing Everything

This agility becomes a real competitive advantage, as legacy firms were built around operating models that are often fragmented, manual, and difficult to adapt. Introducing AI into those environments can improve efficiency at the margins, but it is much harder to fundamentally redesign the workflow itself.

At Thoropass, we have the advantage of building our platform, processes, and service model together. That allows us to move faster, iterate faster, and apply AI in ways that are deeply embedded into how evidence is collected, validated, reviewed, and surfaced to customers and auditors.

Audits have long been constrained by sampling. A SOC 2 review covers a period of time, but the auditor often tests only a slice of activity: a selection of changes, a configuration on a particular date, a handful of tickets, or a subset of evidence. This wasn’t because auditors lacked rigor, but because the work itself was manual, fragmented, and time-bound.

AI, when used well, can ingest larger evidence sets, identify anomalies, compare patterns, and help auditors move beyond narrow sampling toward broader validation. Instead of asking whether 25 of 5,000 code changes followed the right process, an AI-enabled workflow can help review all 5,000 and surface the exceptions a human professional should investigate.

Not only does that lead to a better audit, but it’s also a more valuable role for the auditor. The phrase “a human professional should investigate” isn’t a footnote to this workflow – it is the point of it.

AI can process information, summarize records, classify data, and detect patterns. It can identify whether a required field exists or whether a policy contains specific language. What it can’t do is understand a company’s operational and risk context the way an experienced auditor can. It can’t determine whether a compensating control is truly effective, whether a customer’s environment creates unusual risk, whether a management response is operationally weak despite sounding technically correct, or whether the real issue isn’t the evidence itself but the process behind it.

In compliance and audit, nuance is not decoration – it is the job. This is why human-led advisory remains essential. A 50-person SaaS company with no dedicated security team, a healthcare company managing sensitive patient data, and a multinational enterprise expanding frameworks all require different guidance. AI can accelerate evidence review and workflow execution, but judgment is what makes the work meaningful.

We have already seen versions of this tension play out in other industries embracing AI. Klarna became one of the loudest examples of an AI-first operating model after aggressively automating customer service, only to later resume hiring human support staff when quality and customer experience required more attention. Deloitte Australia also faced scrutiny after an AI-generated government report contained fabricated references and factual errors, resulting in reputational damage and a partial refund of the engagement.

These aren’t arguments against AI. They are arguments against confusing speed with quality.

Another important question for audit firms – and professional services organizations broadly – is how AI changes the talent model. If firms eliminate entry-level roles because AI can perform entry-level tasks, they may improve short-term margins while weakening the profession’s long-term foundation. Today’s managers, partners, and practice leaders were once the people tying out evidence, asking basic questions, participating in walkthroughs, and learning how professional judgment is formed. If that apprenticeship model disappears, where will the next generation of leaders come from?

The answer can’t be preserving administrative work for nostalgia’s sake. No one should build a career around manually collecting screenshots or copying evidence into spreadsheets. But firms should redesign development models, not eliminate them. Junior professionals should learn alongside AI from day one: how to investigate anomalies, challenge outputs, evaluate risk, test broader populations, and understand where automation stops and judgment begins. The work should become more analytical earlier instead of disappearing.

This is where Thoropass represents a different model for the future of audit and assurance.

We aren’t a traditional firm with disconnected software layered on top. We are building a technology-enabled audit platform designed around integrated people, process, and technology layers – with AI embedded directly into evidence acceleration, workflow intelligence, and continuous validation.

That integration gives us the ability to move with a level of speed and agility that legacy operating models struggle to match. This is because our goal isn’t to automate trust. It’s to give auditors and advisors better tools so they can deliver a more responsive, insightful, and scalable experience for customers. When technology, process discipline, and human expertise are integrated correctly, efficiency doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality.

Customers deserve audits that are less performative, less point-in-time, and more reflective of how organizations actually operate. They deserve clearer evidence, faster cycles, stronger visibility, and advisors who can help them mature their security and compliance programs over time.

It’s clear that AI will reshape audit, but the best use of AI in audit isn’t removing the human layer - it’s making that layer more powerful. Because of this, the firms that win in this next era won’t be the firms with the fewest people.

They will be the firms that use AI to make their people better.

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