release:
The AI Revolution Coming to e-Signatures and Electronic Contracting

Table of contents
Introduction:
In the last year or so, it has been impossible to avoid the avalanche of media coverage around the world, reporting on the development of artificial intelligence (AI). While there are a number of types of AI in the market, some of which have been around since at least the 1990s, the ability of Large Language Models (LLMs) to provide interactive services to the mass market came like a seismic shift with the launch of the browser interface provided by ChatGPT.
There are multiple types of generalized AI services available on the market, the most famous of which is ChatGPT by OpenAI. (A short list of other well known services would include Claude by Anthropic, Perplexity, Gemini by Google and Copilot by Microsoft).
SignTime is always focused on what technology can do for business, and so we have been experimenting with different LLM based AI solutions since 2023. We also know that with many of the companies in SignTime’s corner of the technology world, AI has been making its presence felt in the way e-signature and electronic contracting platforms operate. Early in 2025, SignTime will be making some significant announcements in the area of AI, and with our monthly blog we thought it would be a good time to sketch out some of the recent developments with AI in the e-signature market.
First, some recent history. Before the world was introduced to LLMs at scale by OpenAI, most of the well-known AI developments were taking place in an area of computing known as Machine Learning, or ML. ML, as its name implies, is the process of using mathematical models of data to help a computer “learn” without direct instructions being given to it. ML has been effectively applied in a number of different business domains which are very data rich, such as predicting stock prices and detecting fraud to personalizing product recommendations and optimizing supply chains. Traditional ML, however, has struggled to significantly imitate, analyze or approximate human language, writing or dialogue.
From our perspective, pre-LLM ML was optimized around iterative mathematical models, and struggled to deal with unstructured, free-form text. With the advent of large language model AI, many of the challenges of traditional ML have been addressed.
How is AI relevant to e-signatures and SignTime?
SignTime is leveraging existing e-signature related AI tools to solve business problems for our customers that will include:
Metadata management
- Either at the time of sending or at the time of document completion, our Japanese clients need to automatically generate and save contract metadata to be compliant with 電子帳簿保存法 (denshi chobo hozon ho, or the Electronic Bookkeeping Preservation Act). This information includes counterparty, contract start and stop date and total amount.
- Similarly, when a file is scanned or imported, customers will be able to automatically generate and save contract metadata to be compliant with the Act via our ScanTime service.
- Finally, while not required by law, SignTime alerts/reminders of contract expiry or other actions required can be auto-generated with a “best guess” based on contract information.
Reporting
- Aggregate reporting of all contracts in the customer’s storage area, initially with metadata and alert information, and will evolve over time to include other items as well, like “termination penalties”, “renewal requirements” and other business relevant items.
- Our AI features will provide customer summaries of all documents stored within their storage area in a downloadable excel (or other) formats based on business specific needs
Auto-generation of short summaries, indexes and synopsis
- AI will be an excellent tool for providing summary data across huge numbers of contracts. For example, asking an AI tool to summarize all contracts in a storage area that pertain to real property transactions or automatically appending a document summary to eliminate boilerplate information and just provide business details
Context actions
- An example here would be to ask an AI assistant to search for any contract terms or conditions that have similarities in their storage area, enabling both legal teams and business leaders to more easily standardize terms and identify exceptions for both existing and new agreements.

Future Roadmap
As AI becomes a larger and larger part of the SignTime tool set, we are working on future product road maps of some extremely powerful features that will completely change and enhance the user experience. Some of the areas currently under development include:
Tagging
- “Auto-tagging” will provide recommendations at time of upload and contract completion to enable easier search and categorization.
Summary
- Document summaries of “Key Terms” (text as outcome, with options available through clicking a button).
Compliance and Error Checking
- Provision of “consistency checking” at the time of contract upload (e.g. “This contract mentions appendix B but I don’t see appendix B.”)
- Customer tools that will help with compliance relevant to their company/hierarchy on documents based on contents (e.g., “our typical rule here is one year.”)
- Auto generation of templates (e.g. for contract renewals, or extensions)
- Iteration with the client over specific items
Autodesign
- Will provide the ability to auto-design new documents for signatures and templates via “would you like to place a signature field here” or “a date here” prompts.
We’re looking forward to all the new and innovative ways AI will impact our client experience. As you can see from the list above, Large Language Model AI will have a dramatic impact on the way e-signature and electronic contract management services are delivered to our customers, making the task of completing contracts, and managing them once they are completed, even simpler.
In building our roadmap for AI feature deployment, we’re interested in your opinions and feedback on these ideas or any others that we haven’t covered. We’ve also developed a number of video examples that show how some of these features will operate so be sure to check them out as they come out and let us know your thoughts!