ALEXANDRIA, Va., June 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,282,501, issued on April 22, was assigned to PwC Product Sales LLC (New York).

"Method and apparatus for an AI-assisted virtual consultant" was invented by Paul Sheward (Chicago), Chung-Sheng Li (Scarsdale, N.Y.), Scott Likens (Austin, Texas), Saverio Fato (Wilton Manors, Fla.), Joseph Doyle Harrington (Granite Bay, Calif.), Joseph David Voyles (Louisville, Ky.), Jonathan B. Rhine (Suffern, N.Y.), Alexander Nicholas Boldizsar (Woodstock, Conn.), Winnie Cheng (West New York, N.J.), Todd Christopher Morrill (Newburgh, N.Y.), Yuan Wan (Irvine, Calif.) and William Spotswood Seward (Los Angeles).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A system for autom...