The tax department’s annual report reveals a diverse and growing range of use cases for generative tools, including summarising calls to customer helplines and providing online advice via a chatbot
HM Revenue and Customs ramped up its use of generative artificial intelligence tools in the 2024/25 year – during which it established a dedicated “landing zone to help us safely exploit” the technology.
In its annual report for the 12-month period concluding at the end of March, the department indicates that the year brought with it significant advancements in its use of gen AI and other emerging tech.
Use cases for generative systems – a category for tools which can autonomously produce written or visual content, as well as software code – include testing the technology’s ability to provide a summary of calls to HMRC helplines.
The report reveals that the department has “explored call summarisation to support telephony advisers, [by] testing the ability to reduce the time spent on customer call wrap-up through real-time call summaries, and better categorising calls”.
The document adds that other deployments have included those focused on supporting “modernised recruitment by introducing innovative artificial intelligence products that simplify and improve the vacancy-holder experience and reduce the time spent by hiring managers in the recruitment process”.
“We have built and introduced ‘Skill Scribe’ for hiring managers to make it easier to write adverts, interview questions and provide outreach support,” the report adds. “We’ve also developed a regional insights tool that gives real time location information to aid with labour market analysis.”
During FY25 HMRC also participated in “a cross-government AI chatbot pilot aiming to make it easier to access guidance on GOV.UK”, as well as supporting “enhanced compliance targeting, debt prediction, and fraud detection through advanced AI analytics tools”.
The department also undertook efforts to enable “in international approaches to the use of AI, by pulling together examples of AI use from tax authorities” around the world. This work contributed to the creation of a global ‘Trustworthy AI Framework’ that will be tested later in 2025, the report says.
To help support possible future uses of new technology, HMRC has also “built an internal generative AI landing zone to help us safely exploit AI, whether internally or for customer-facing services”. Landing zones are secure and flexible environments intended to enable organisations to implement and manage cloud-based software tools.
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Deployments to date have also been subject to “additional assurance” from the tax department’s Professional Standards Committee, which the report says “includes ethics experts and non-executives”.
“Where we use AI in a way that could impact customer outcomes, we always ensure that the result is explainable, that there’s a human in the loop, and that it complies with our data protection, security, and AI ethical standards,” the report says. “We will continue to build on our existing AI framework and align with and contribute to cross-government best practice and guidance.”
The document adds: “We also recognise the importance of reassuring customers and the wider public about how we’re using AI. We have an AI Ethics Working Group, which is responsible for establishing mandatory processes, challenging projects, and reporting on progress.”
Over the course of 2024/25, there was also progress in increasing the AI skills of the department’s workforce, with 7,225 completing AI-focused training modules offered via the HMRC Digital Academy.
The report says that the agency’s current uses of generative artificial intelligence and other emerging tech build on a long-standing history of previous deployments of less sophisticated models, while future explorations will begin with lower-risk initiatives.
“There is huge potential for artificial intelligence and other developing technologies to be used to improve how organisations operate and give customers a better experience,” it says. “AI is the use of technology to create systems capable of performing tasks commonly thought to require human intelligence and we’ve been using ‘traditional’ AI for decades at HMRC. More recently we’ve also started making use of generative AI, which is a subset of AI that can generate new information, such as text or images. To test this new technology, we’re focusing on safer, internal uses of AI that drive better customer experience, internal productivity and improve our operations.”
