In California, an AI Assistant Is Helping Collect Taxes – Government Technology

Oh, splendid — the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration has deployed a generative AI tool from SymSoft Solutions to help agents collect taxes. Because nothing says 'trust us with your money' like a chatbot that transcribes your desperate phone call.

Presumably, the AI is trained on every tax form ever written, which is reassuring until you remember that tax law is a labyrinth even human lawyers can't navigate without a bottle of antacids. The tool transcribes conversations and generates responses, which human agents then review — so essentially, we've added an extra layer of bureaucracy that can hallucinate tax advice.

But hey, at least the state is saving on call centre salaries. The human agents get to spend their days double-checking AI-generated nonsense instead of, you know, actually helping people. The ghost of the Franchise Tax Board is laughing somewhere.