3 ways to amplify audit impact in the AI era

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how businesses operate, raising expectations for every function, including internal audit. Leaders across organizations are pressing audit teams to harness AI for efficiency gains, while the proliferation of digital transformation, combined with today’s volatile geopolitical and macroeconomic climate, continues to generate new risks at an unprecedented pace.

For internal audit, this means the mandate is clear: lean in. Success requires not only responsibly adopting AI to enhance efficiency, but also expanding the function’s scope to continuously monitor and proactively provide assurance over these evolving risk exposures.

As audit teams refine their strategies for the year ahead, three priorities stand out: building agility into audit plans, driving departmental efficiency, and maturing continuous assurance capabilities. This article explores three essential ways internal audit can stay ahead of the AI curve and strengthen its role as a strategic, trusted advisor to the business.

To learn more, register for AuditBoard’s upcoming webinars on next-gen auditing!

Growing assurance needs driven by AI and dynamic risks

CEOs are already seeing the business impact of AI: one-third report that generative AI (GenAI) has increased revenue and profitability, and nearly half expect further profit gains. Overall, C-suite mandates for the next year are clear: 82% prioritize digital transformation, 64% operational efficiency, and 62% implementing AI, indicating that AI adoption is beginning to surpass more traditional business priorities. In particular, enterprise AI adoption is accelerating toward agents: KPMG reports 42% of enterprises have already deployed AI agents in response to the clear ROI from automating repeatable work.

The risk landscape is evolving just as quickly: Gartner reports nearly a third of organizations experienced attacks on AI application infrastructure in the past year, with another 32% reporting targeted attacks on AI applications, often through prompt manipulation. At the same time, EY’s 2025 research highlights the growing adoption of AI governance, conformity, and performance assessments — a natural lane for internal audit to provide independent assurance. Taken together, these trends make clear that continuous monitoring and AI governance assurance are no longer optional, but essential for audit functions seeking to stay ahead of both risk and regulatory expectations.

Room for improving AI adoption in internal audit

As audit teams expand their scope to address novel AI-related risks alongside other emerging risks, they are also under pressure to apply AI within their own processes. Generative AI is already demonstrating value across the audit lifecycle — from planning to reporting — by driving efficiency and automating routine tasks. Machine learning, a subset of AI that trains on data to detect patterns and make predictions, has also proven particularly powerful for enhancing data analytics and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions.

Yet adoption within internal audit remains at an early stage. While 42% of CAEs say embedding GenAI into audit workflows is a 2025 priority, most functions are still in the exploratory (28%) or pilot (21%) phase. In fact, only 41% of audit teams report using GenAI at all, and frequent use is rare — just 13% apply it in planning, 6% in fieldwork, and 11% in reporting. To remain relevant and deliver greater strategic value, audit teams must move beyond experimentation and start operationalizing GenAI at scale. The opportunity to enhance audit quality, reduce manual effort, and deliver faster, data-driven insights is too significant to ignore.

3 ways to amplify audit impact in the AI era

The takeaway is clear: to deliver assurance at the speed of business change, internal audit must modernize its methods. This means not only embracing AI to enhance efficiency, but also expanding its scope to continuously monitor and proactively provide assurance against emerging and evolving risks.

The following are three ways that audit teams can unlock new levels of efficiency, uncover deeper insights, and provide continuous assurance in a rapidly evolving business environment.

1. Augment your impact with embedded and GRC-trained AI. AI’s most transformative potential lies in its ability to enhance — not replace — auditors’ expertise. By adopting embedded, governance-focused AI tools within existing GRC and audit management platforms, teams can automate routine workflows, streamline evidence collection, and deliver intelligent insights across every stage of the audit lifecycle. These AI capabilities accelerate planning, testing, and reporting, freeing auditors to focus on higher-value analysis. They can surface real-time risk signals, flag anomalies as they occur, and even predict downstream impacts based on historical patterns. Additionally, it’s important to look for AI tools that are auditable by design, where every AI action is logged and traceable, ensuring your organization can meet regulatory requirements, internal review standards, and board expectations.

Tech tip: AuditBoard is a global, AI-powered connected risk solution with a full suite of cross-platform AI features designed to enhance and accelerate common audit processes and workflows. Our AI suite includes:

• Generative AI accelerates audit work by drafting content for risk, control, issue, and test procedures.
• Intelligent Recommendations identify key connections and suggest mapping for controls, risks, issues, and staffing assignments to enhance collaboration and resource allocation.
• AuditBoard Assistant is an in-app chat interface that helps users navigate the platform, converse with data, and initiate tasks.
• Fieldwork Assistant streamlines the control-testing cycle during fieldwork by automating repetitive tasks like sample selection, test sheet generation, evidence mapping and annotation, and results documentation.

2. Stay ahead of emerging risks with Continuous Auditing/Monitoring. Traditional, point-in-time audits can’t keep pace with the velocity of today’s risks. Continuous auditing and monitoring enable internal audit to analyze entire data populations, not just samples, detecting anomalies and emerging risks before they escalate.

By integrating data streams from across the enterprise, audit functions can proactively identify control breakdowns, compliance gaps, or operational inefficiencies in near real time. This approach strengthens collaboration with first and second lines of defense, shifting audit’s position from retrospective reviewer to proactive risk partner. It also demonstrates to stakeholders and regulators that the organization is serious about early detection, resilience, and accountability.

Tech tip: AuditBoard’s Continuous Auditing feature runs recurring analytic workflows in OpsAudit and SOXHUB to automatically test full populations and flag exceptions. Results are surfaced directly in audit records to enhance visibility and guide next steps, like creating issues, conducting deeper testing, or adjusting scope.

3. Build a dynamic audit plan that adapts to emerging risks and aligns with your organization’s most critical priorities. An agile audit plan is no longer a “nice to have” but a strategic imperative. Using insights from AI and continuous auditing, audit teams can dynamically update and reprioritize their audit universe to stay aligned with the organization’s most pressing risks and evolving objectives.

This means moving from static, annual planning to living audit plans that adjust as the environment shifts. Audit leaders can visualize coverage in real time, identify gaps before they’re questioned by stakeholders, and clearly demonstrate how audit activities map to enterprise risk priorities. The result: more responsive assurance, greater transparency, and a stronger, more trusted partnership with the business.

Redefining assurance in the age of AI

AI is no longer a distant frontier: it’s here, reshaping how organizations operate, compete, and manage risk. The pressure to deliver assurance at the speed of business change will only intensify as AI adoption accelerates across every function. Audit teams that act now by leveraging AI capabilities, advancing continuous auditing, and adopting agile audit planning will not only enhance efficiency, but also elevate their strategic relevance. These capabilities enable internal audit to move from retrospective assessment to real-time assurance, from reporting on risks to anticipating them, and from supporting the business to shaping its resilience and integrity.

To learn more, register for AuditBoard’s upcoming webinars on next-gen auditing!

About the authors

Vi Tran, CPA, CIA, is a Product Marketing Manager at AuditBoard, where she leverages her background in audit and internal controls to enhance marketing strategies and outreach efforts. Prior to joining AuditBoard, Vi served as an external auditor at PwC, Internal Controls Senior Analyst at Targa Resources, and Associate Manager at The Siegfried Group. Connect with Vi on LinkedIn.