Agentic AI and Human–AI Collaboration in Auditing: Roles, Benefits, and Risks in the Korean Audit Market

<p>Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming the auditing profession (Dong et al. 2023; Gu et al. 2024). Early pplications primarily focused on automating routine tasks, such as journal entry testing or anomaly detection. More recently, advances in AI have given rise to agentic AI—systems capable of autonomous goal setting, iterative reasoning, and adaptive task execution (Li et al. 2025). Unlike traditional decision-support tools, agentic AI can actively participate in audit processes by identifying risks, proposing procedures, and generating documentation. This shift raises fundamental questions regarding auditor responsibility, professional judgment, and accountability. These issues are particularly salient in jurisdictions with strong regulatory oversight and high legal exposure for auditors. The Korean audit market provides a distinctive and informative setting in this regard. Korea is characterized by stringent auditor liability under the External Audit Act, intensive regulatory inspections by the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS), and a growing emphasis on audit process documentation and consistency. This commentary examines how agentic AI may be integrated into auditing through a human–AI collaboration framework, focusing on the roles, benefits, and risks of such collaboration in the Korean audit environment.</p>