An employee in Hungary asked if having twins would impact his parental leave. A worker in Spain wondered whether the bonus of $20,000 euros she received would be taxed. Another employee asked what requirements he would have to abide by if he went to work in a United Arab Emirates country as a foreign national.

Those queries, received by clients of multinational professional services organization EY, underscore the complexity organizations worldwide face in trying to answer employees’ payroll questions. To address that challenge, the EY organization (previously named Ernst and Young) worked with Microsoft to create a generative AI chatbot that will be developed to answer payroll questions from employees across the 159 countries and 49 languages that EY clients encompass.

The chatbot, which leverages the Microsoft Cloud and ChatGPT in Azure OpenAI Service, uses a large language model (LLM) that analyzes information from pay slips, tax regulations and employer policies to provide answers to complex payroll questions — with the goal of increasing employee satisfaction and reducing costs for employers.

“Payroll touches employees more than any other function,” says Sheri Sullivan, EY global payroll operate leader. “Employees around the globe currently have a very poor experience when it comes to getting answers to their payroll questions. And employers struggle with that.”