Tax questions can now be answered by H&R Block AI chatbot

H&R Block, the tax-prep company, just introduced a cool new tool called AI Tax Assist. It’s like a smart chatbot that comes with their paid DIY tax-filing products. This little guy is here to help you with all your tax questions – from forms to deductions and those tricky tax codes.

Now, using fancy AI for taxes might sound a bit risky. You know how sometimes computers can say confident-sounding things that are way off? H&R Block gets it. They made sure AI Tax Assist went through serious testing with both tech and human experts. There’s even a team keeping an eye on it to make sure it’s accurate and well-behaved. And hey, if you see any issues, there’s a feedback feature to make the system even better.

H&R Block is super confident about accuracy, with a spokesperson saying they’ve got a 100% accuracy guarantee and promise you’ll get the maximum refund. Plus, they’re not pulling info from the wild internet – only from their own H&R Block dataset. They built this language model with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, using data from their Tax Institute and wisdom from 60,000 tax professionals.

Now, H&R Block has had some drama in the past – like being accused of misleading customers and even a lawsuit about sharing info with Google. But PCMag, our tech-savvy sibling, gave their tax software a thumbs up.

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Just so you know, the free version of H&R Block’s online tax filing doesn’t come with AI Tax Assist. But you can get it in the Deluxe edition for 35 bucks. Happy filing!