Digital-first reporting is key to AI-readability
In a recent webinar hosted by Friend Studio, XBRL International CEO John Turner joined reporting practitioners James Rennie, Group Finance Director of Oakley Capital, and Rory Nussbaumer, Global Sustainability Reporting and Strategy Manager at Corteva, to discuss why digital-first reporting is becoming essential in the AI era.
A central theme was that the digitally filed annual report, prepared in XHTML with Inline XBRL tagging under frameworks such as the UK Single Electronic Format (UKSEF) and European Single Electronic Format (ESEF), should be treated as the primary version of a report, rather than an afterthought to the PDF edition.
The speakers also explored the growing use of artificial intelligence by investors and analysts, noting that AI systems can efficiently process structured HTML and XBRL-tagged data, while PDFs remain difficult for machines to analyse. Ensuring reports are published in accessible, well-structured, natively digital formats therefore increases discoverability, usability and trustworthiness.
