From digital to intelligent reporting with AI and XBRL
Dr Maria Mora, Head of Innovation & Digital Strategy at Fujitsu Spain and a member of XBRL International’s Board of Directors, offered a compelling takeaway from this week’s IFRS Taxonomy Consultative Group (ITCG) meeting in London: the era of intelligent reporting is here, and XBRL is its foundation.
Held 6–7 October, the meeting brought together regulators, standard-setters, technologists and preparers to explore the evolving landscape of digital reporting. Dr Mora captured a central shift underway: from producing data to connecting, interpreting, and learning from it. In this AI-augmented world, machine-readable standards like XBRL are becoming essential infrastructure.
AI is already lightening the load for preparers, from suggesting tags and navigating taxonomies to flagging outliers and inconsistencies. What was once a fully manual process is being transformed, unlocking more time for improving data quality and generating decision-useful insights. Dr Mora emphasised that this isn’t just about automation: humans remain firmly in the loop, validating and interpreting AI-generated suggestions.
She also highlighted the rise of purpose-built AI agents trained specifically for financial and sustainability data. Not generic models, but tools powered by taxonomies and trustworthy, structured data. For these to succeed, we need machine-first taxonomies, long-term stability, transparency and, crucially, explainability. As Dr Mora put it: “AI can generate coherent answers – but coherence is not correctness. XBRL provides the framework that makes AI’s outputs reliable, interpretable, and auditable.”
Alongside this forward look, she drew attention to real progress happening today: Japan’s world-leading Inline XBRL adoption and expansion into ESG disclosures; Australia’s momentum towards mandating digital reporting; and the IFRS Foundation’s streamlining of its taxonomy to reduce over-tagging and boost usability.
At the heart of all this is XBRL – not just a format, but the domain knowledge layer enabling trustworthy, intelligent reporting.
Dr Mora’s full insights on LinkedIn are well worth your time.
