Omelettes, chainsaws and the future of ESG reporting
This week, Datamaran published an interview with John Turner, CEO of XBRL International (XII), and Jérôme Basdevant, CTO and co-founder of Datamaran, tackling a hot topic: is AI set to replace digital tagging in ESG reporting?
They don’t think so. Basdevant and Turner make a compelling case that AI and digital tagging aren’t rivals, but work together for reliable and insightful sustainability disclosures. Digital tagging provides the foundational structure that enables companies like Datamaran to leverage the analytic power of AI effectively, and focus their energies on the insights that add real value for their clients. Basdevant likens using AI to attempt to recreate structure without tagging to “using a chainsaw to cut an omelette” — it might more-or-less work, but it’s hardly the tool for the job. Structured data, delivered through digital tagging, ensures that AI insights are consistent, comparable, and trustworthy, based on a single version of the truth — avoiding what Turner warns could become “a hall of mirrors” of distorted ESG interpretations.
With regulators pushing for digital-first reporting through initiatives like the EU’s CSRD and the IFRS Sustainability Standards, this conversation couldn’t be more timely. XII believes that digital-first, AI-enhanced reporting is the key to delivering transparency and trust in ESG data.
You can read the full interview on Datamaran’s website here.
