Not to be that guy, but it is Tax Day.

I'm David Brancaccio. It's April 15th.

File your tax return or do the extension.

In 12 states, people can use a pilot IRS direct file system to directly file their

taxes online going around sometimes pricier private systems. For now the IRS

arrangement is for basic tax returns like W-2 income with the standard deduction but the

intuit's and H&R blocks of the world are offering jazzier systems driven by

new forms of artificial intelligence.

Marketplace's Megan McCarty Karino has that.

Late last year, Intuit and H&R Block introduced dueling AI assistance.

Mostly, you know, kind of support self-service intelligence rather than click a button and

fill your taxes out for you.

Analysts Alex Zucin at Wolf Research says both AI tools are built on large language models like

chat gPT but trained on tax sources.

Into its assistant acts as more of a guide, creating checklists or scanning for missing information,

while H&R blocks is more of a customer support chatbot.

But since the technology is new, we cannot fully rely on that.

Subod Kumar heads the Center for Business Analytics and Disruptive Technologies

at Temple University, which has tested the tools.

He found they sometimes provided irrelevant

information and couldn't answer complex questions. Both platforms will

connect users with a human to assist when needed and the companies offer accuracy guarantees.

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