Tangelo Talks: AI in Corporate Reporting – Today & Tomorrow

What’s the real potential of AI in corporate reporting, and where do we go from here? In our latest Tangelo Talks, we sat down with Erwin Groenendal (Co-founder and Product Evangelist at Tangelo) and Rob Boerman (AI expert at our Group’s InnovationLab) to explore how AI is already transforming the reporting landscape, and what’s just around the corner.

Watch the full session below:

From ChatGPT to Copilots: AI for content creation

Most reporting teams’ first encounter with AI? Content generation tools like ChatGPT. But copy pasting into a public AI platform brings serious data security risks. That’s why Tangelo developed an AI Copilot, built directly into the Tangelo editor. This keeps sensitive data within a secure environment, while enabling smart content suggestions, edits, and more. The AI Copilot will be available as an option soon.

Structure matters: Why tagging is still essential in the age of AI

There’s been buzz about AI making electronic reporting obsolete. Can’t AI just extract insights from PDFs? Not quite. As Rob explained, “AI models don’t have a built in notion of truth, they generate what sounds plausible. That’s why structured formats like inline XBRL are so crucial. They remove ambiguity.” Both experts agreed: AI performs best when it has clean, structured data to work with.

Erwin added: “Studies by XBRL International in the US show the differences in accuracy between AI working with unstructured content (PDF) and with structured content (inline XBRL). And tools from our partner Corporatings already demonstrate this in action. AI isn’t replacing tagging — it depends on it.”

Beyond text: Tagging, QA, translation & workflow support

The use of AI doesn’t stop at content creation. Tangelo’s product roadmap now includes AI assisted tagging, bulk tagging for ESRS, quality control checks, gap analysis, and translation. Rob added, “AI can spot inconsistencies, suggest taxonomy concepts, or flag missing disclosures — but it’s a copilot, not a decision maker. Human oversight is critical.” The conversation also touched on AI for workflow optimization, including task management; a promising area that’s still in early development.

AI at the reader’s end: smarter report consumption

Reporting doesn’t end at publication and AI is changing how stakeholders interact with complex reports. Erwin mentioned CM.com’s AI powered Q&A chatbot on their 2024 Annual Report webpage as an example of using AI to transform engagement with annual reports. Rob explained that this kind of functionality depends on “good retrieval methods and clean source material.” When done right, it turns dense disclosure documents into intuitive, interactive experiences.

Looking Ahead

When asked what excites them most about the road ahead:

“AI beyond content creation; assisting you with tasks in the application itself.”

— Erwin Groenendal

From AI assisted authoring to smarter stakeholder engagement, Tangelo is betting on AI not as a gimmick, but as a core enabler for faster, more accurate, and more useful corporate reporting.

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