SOX and AI Financial Reporting: What Sections 302, 404, and 906 Mean for Autonomous Agents
· 5 min read
SOX Section 302 requires the CEO and CFO to personally certify that financial reports are accurate and that they've reviewed the controls over financial reporting. Section 906 makes false certifications a criminal offense — up to 20 years in prison.
When an AI agent is generating financial reports, running disclosure checks, or preparing SEC filings, those certifications still apply. The executives signing them need to be able to vouch for the process that produced the numbers.
That's only possible if the AI's actions are auditable, the outputs are traceable to specific data sources, and a human reviewed the result before it was filed.