Two months ago, the Commonwealth Bank announced plans to replace 45 customer service workers with an artificial intelligence chatbot before later backtracking and reversing the decision.
But across the financial services and banking sector, the use of AI is soaring and thousands of jobs have been cut – though the connection is never officially made.
CBA worker, Dhanushi Jayatileka, who was also recently made redundant, says she is one of many workers to unofficially lose her job to AI, in a trend that is reshaping the nation’s labour market behind closed doors.
Jayatileka, who worked in the bank’s back office for four years, says her team had been shedding staff since 2024, leaving those remaining to lean on AI to replace work conducted by their former colleagues.
“We are teaching the machine to eventually take our job,” says Jayatileka, who is being supported by the Finance Sector Union.
“We need to look after people first.”
Experts warn that Australia’s major companies are cutting thousands of white-collar finance and technology jobs with the help of accelerating use of AI, without publicly accepting the job losses and new technology is linked.
Manju Ahuja, a professor of information systems and technology management at the University of New South Wales, says there is an “observable” link between workforce changes and the uptake of AI tools.
“It is the tip of the iceberg [because] many AI-related job losses are just not officially recorded,” she says.
Sales, customer service and entry-level white-collar jobs are among the roles vulnerable to being automated into AI, according to a study by the University of Queensland (UQ). Similar findings were made by the government’s Jobs and Skills agency last month.
“Where you can standardise it to just one task, that job goes,” says the UQ adjunct professor and study co-author Evan Shellshear.
Shellshear says demand for consulting and accounting graduates and clerks is already slipping in Australia, as senior staff turn to AI to automatically complete the traditionally menial work assigned to junior colleagues.
CBA has said that recent redundancies, with the exception of the 45 customer service roles, were not related to the increased takeup of AI. A spokesperson said the bank could not comment on individual employee cases.
The spokesperson said CBA’s total workforce had increased since 2021, with more staff added in non-automated areas even as others were cut.
CBA is one of several big Australian companies to promote the improved efficiencies created by AI in recent months.
It says business bank queries are answered three times faster, engineers’ code change output and automated customer service interactions have risen by a third and fifth respectively, and call centre wait times have fallen.
ANZ on Tuesday announced it would sack 3,500 of its 40,000-plus employees by September 2026. Its bankers began using an AI analysis assistant called amie two months ago, after the company deployed AI tools across software engineering, research and writing. ANZ was contacted for comment.
Telstra cut 2,800 jobs over the year to June and expects to cut a further 550 roles in 2025. The telco saved $301m on labour expenses in 2024-2025, according to its latest annual report.
Most of its remaining staff are using the Microsoft AI assistant, Copilot, and senior executives have told investors faster AI adoption will help cut costs and shrink its 30,000-person workforce.
The Bank of Queensland (BoQ) in August cut 200 roles, including in its call centre, while partnering with multinational tech giant CapGemini to accelerate AI use and manage some queries overseas.
Spokespeople for BoQ and Telstra say those job cuts are not related to investments in AI and new technology will help staff serve clients and to work more effectively. Telstra adds the company will consult staff and unions on longer-term effects of AI on staffing.
Westpac, which is also promoting its adoption of AI tools, is in the process of cutting an estimated 1,500 jobs after offshoring nearly 200 jobs earlier in 2025. Tech company Canva has also recently sacked 10 of its 12 technical writers.
Asked if AI use had facilitated the reductions, spokespeople for both companies say the cuts are the result of changing business needs for specific roles, and affected workers are being provided with support.
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AI has already hit employment in America, where one in eight early-career roles in the most AI-exposed occupations have been lost, according to a Stanford study published in August.
Unemployment for recent college graduates has held near a historically high 5% in the US in 2025, while hiring has slowed as tech companies, including Salesforce and CrowdStrike, substitute AI for new staff.
While finance and technology companies have said AI allows them to give people higher value tasks after automating repetitive work, not all Australians have had that experience.
Kathryn Sullivan, one of the 45 CBA customer service workers the bank says was made redundant due to AI, says she had expected to work alongside AI.
“I expected [AI] would be helping you to do your job better, taking away some of the menial or time-consuming work, so that we can actually deliver better service,” she says.
“[But] they’re actually using it just to downsize the workforce.”
