Hyperbole or reality? The effect of auditors' AI education on audit report timeliness

Abstract

We manually collect data on auditors with artificial intelligence (AI) educational backgrounds comprising 8201 company-year observations of A-share listed companies in China between 2014 and 2020. We then develop an auditor individual-level setting to investigate the role of AI education in audit report timeliness. Results show auditors with AI educational backgrounds are negatively and significantly associated with audit report lag, indicating auditors with AI education can shorten annual audit report times by using programming, applied technology, and logical-thinking skills, thereby enhancing audit report timeliness. In addition, this timeliness effect is more pronounced in accounting firms with more branches and among state-owned enterprises, and higher-risk clients. Furthermore, AI education and Certified Public Accountant status can complementarily strengthen this effect, particularly in companies with higher client portfolio risk. Our results provide evidence that auditors with AI education play an important role in audit report timeliness reality and not hyperbole, which supports the efficiency view, and the understanding potential unintended consequences of auditors' AI education could be of interest to regulators that plan to develop new liberal arts framework.