In October 2023, following a series of recent breakthroughs in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the European Court of Auditors (ECA) started an internal reflection on its application within the institution with the paper "Opportunities and challenges in responding to and using artificial intelligence". As a follow-up, this document provides further analysis of the key issues and outlines an initial AI strategy and a deployment roadmap. The current ECA strategy covers the period 2021-2025. Preparation of the next strategy is likely to start soon, and will need to fully reflect AI aspects. This initial strategy should allow implementation of AI activities to start in a structured way, as well as constitute an input for the next ECA strategy. AI is a deeply transformative technology, but it will not replace the critical thinking and professional judgement of our auditors. We envision a use of AI that will assist our staff and augment their capabilities, allowing for more timely, efficient and soundly-based audits. We will uphold the highest ethical standards in the deployment and use of AI systems, safeguarding against biases, prioritising transparency, and applying caution and professional scepticism. We will remain faithful to our core values of independence, objectivity, integrity, transparency, and professionalism. Our vision is to leverage AI as an enabler to ultimately drive greater accountability, transparency, and trust in the EU. In this document, we explain the use of AI for audit and the audit of AI systems, and clarify the distinction between them. We then propose a set of goals and objectives for the ECA and, after an analysis of the risks, an AI roadmap with concrete actions.
