AI in ESG reporting: enhancing efficiency, not replacing expertise
published 6.14.24
I have an AI assistant. It follows me everywhere and takes notes for me during meetings. They’re great notes—clear and concise, broken up by topic, relevance, and action items. Sometimes, when I have a followup question or need clarification after a meeting, I look at my AI notes and often find the answer waiting for me there, perfectly synthesized in a neat bullet. It’s like magic. As another professional navigating the sudden ubiquity of AI at work, this is where I think AI shines: its ability to extract and summarize information from text or audio can save many minutes or even hours of work. Anybody who has ever written an ESG report knows that tasks like these are some of the most labor-intensive, tedious aspects of reporting. Here, AI’s ability to lighten the load is undeniable. But with AI taking on some of the heavy lifting, I couldn’t help but wonder—are we automating ourselves out of our jobs?
Maybe someday. Every update to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its increased incorporation into specialized tools could be bringing us closer to that future, but this is not the case today. Identifying and summarizing information are crucial parts of ESG report writing, but they’re not the whole game. For now, creating an ESG narrative remains an art informed in large part by factoring in the perspectives, preferences, and concerns of internal stakeholders, customers, and investors. This is subtle, still deeply human work. In my experience, generative AI like ChatGPT can provide the foundations of a report; it can stitch facts together to produce a seemingly coherent narrative, but its drafts are unlikely to survive a review by your Marketing or Legal teams. That’s because, in its current iterations, AI remains a tool: it can help you write, but it can’t write for you.
An ESG report is a snapshot of a company’s vision, business, values, and direction, which often requires broaching sensitive topics in a nuanced, sophisticated way that addresses and responds to stakeholder concerns—AI can’t do that yet. But it can do plenty of other very useful, practical things. Here’s how I think AI can and can’t help:
AI can…
Provide a great synthesis of a long document or lengthy interview audio (a game-changer for extracting notes from interviews recordings)
Jog your brain to help you find that word on the tip of your tongue or rephrase an unwieldy sentence
Check your writing for grammar, punctuation, and readability
Help you come up with catchy section titles
AI cannot…
Deeply understand stakeholder concerns or fully address them
Tell a company’s story, mission, and values in new, inspiring ways
Capture nuanced tone and messaging, especially when it comes to sensitive content
Write an entire report or even a report section for you—though it can help get you started
Structure and present information in the most effective way
To learn more about our ESG reporting work, please contact us. A human will respond. 🙂
by Jorge Bello
Senior Associate
