cfonews.ai
  1. cfonews.ai
  2. Methodology

How entries are found and checked

Every filing entry starts as a full-text search on SEC EDGAR, is read in the filing itself, and is written only from a passage copied verbatim from it. Every tracker row is a document opened on the regulator's own site.

1. The searches

The desk runs 33 phrase searches through EDGAR full-text search over 10-K, 10-Q and 8-K filings. Each pairs an AI term with a finance-function phrase, such as "financial reporting processes", "month-end close", "accounts payable process", "business email compromise" or "fraudulent wire transfers". EDGAR matches the phrases anywhere in a document, so a hit is only a lead. The full list is published with the site's code and repeated at the foot of this page.

2. Reading the filing

Each hit is downloaded from sec.gov and split into sentences. A sentence is a candidate only when it names AI and a finance-function term in the same sentence: financial reporting, internal control, disclosure controls, the close, payables, receivables, invoices, planning and analysis, tax compliance, reconciliations, wire transfers or payment fraud. Sentences about an AI business line, a crypto treasury or a data center are set aside. An editor then reads the candidates and keeps a passage only when it is about the company's own finance, accounting, reporting or control work, about a finance product the company sells, or about AI-enabled fraud aimed at payments or executives.

3. The excerpt and the words around it

The excerpt is copied from the filing, 40 words or fewer; where words are left out, an ellipsis marks the cut. The headline and the first sentence of the paragraph say only what the excerpt says. The second sentence says where the passage sits: the item heading it appears under, read from the filing's own headings, and the filing date. When the heading cannot be read reliably, the entry names the form and date only. Before publication a script re-reads each filing and confirms every segment of the excerpt is in it, in order, and that the kicker matches the section.

4. Kickers

  • RISK FACTOR (22 entries): the passage sits under Item 1A, Risk Factors.
  • CONTROLS (0 entries): the passage sits under Item 9A of a 10-K or Item 4 of a 10-Q, Controls and Procedures.
  • DISCLOSURE (14 entries): anywhere else in a 10-K or 10-Q, such as Item 1, Business, Item 1C, Cybersecurity, or management's discussion and analysis.
  • 8-K (1 entries): a current report or its exhibit.

5. The front page

The lead slot on the front page holds the newest entry by filing date (ties go to the company first in alphabetical order); no editor picks it. Under its excerpt is one counted line: how many other companies in this log have an entry with the same kicker filed in the 90 days up to and including the lead's filing date. Each filing page carries the same count for its own entry, with links to the entries counted. Kicker colours are fixed: yellow for RISK FACTOR, a graphite outline for DISCLOSURE, solid graphite for 8-K, a pale panel for CONTROLS.

6. Duplicates

Companies repeat risk factors from one filing to the next. The desk keeps one entry per filing and skips a later filing whose passage repeats one already logged for the same company. Two entries from the same company appear only when the passages differ.

7. Coverage

The stream holds 37 entries from filings dated 2025-11-04 to 2026-10-21. It is a log of what the searches found and the editor kept, not a census of every filing that mentions AI. Counts on this site describe the log and nothing wider.

8. The regulation tracker

Each of the 25 rows was opened on its primary site, and the row carries the date it was checked. The title is printed as published. The type is the document's form as its own page gives it (proposed rule, press release, staff advisory, report, speech and so on); the tracker prints no separate status, because for every row it would repeat the type. Speeches are one official's views. Some primary sites refused automated requests on the day of checking (the PCAOB, FASB, IOSCO, ESMA, EUR-Lex and the eCFR among them); their documents are left out until they can be opened and read, rather than described from memory.

9. Daily refresh

A scheduled job re-runs the searches over the last seven days and proposes new candidates as drafts in a pull request. Drafts are not shown on the site; an editor writes and checks each one before it is marked published. The published date of a page is written once, the day it first goes live, and never moved.

The searches, in full

  1. "financial reporting processes, and internal controls"
  2. "errors in our decision-making"
  3. "artificial intelligence" "errors in our financial reporting"
  4. "AI" "errors in our financial reporting"
  5. "AI" "our financial reporting processes"
  6. "artificial intelligence" "our financial reporting processes"
  7. "AI" "financial close process"
  8. "AI" "invoice processing" "our"
  9. "AI" "accounts payable process"
  10. "AI" "finance and accounting functions"
  11. "AI" "deepfake" "finance"
  12. "AI" "business email compromise"
  13. "AI within our financial reporting"
  14. "artificial intelligence" "month-end close"
  15. "AI" "month-end close"
  16. "AI" "our finance team"
  17. "artificial intelligence" "accounting function"
  18. "use of AI" "financial reporting process"
  19. "artificial intelligence" "internal control over financial reporting"
  20. "deepfake" "wire transfer"
  21. "AI washing"
  22. "AI" "forecasting, financial reporting"
  23. "AI" "inaccurate financial reporting"
  24. "AI" "our accounting and finance"
  25. "AI" "finance and accounting teams"
  26. "AI" "within our finance"
  27. "AI" "in our finance"
  28. "AI" "fraudulent wire transfers"
  29. "AI" "fraudulent payment"
  30. "AI" "impersonate" "executives" "wire"
  31. "AI" "financial reporting and analysis"
  32. "generative AI" "our finance"
  33. "AI" "accounting and financial reporting" "we use"

Corrections to desk@cfonews.ai. See also about the desk.