Commonwealth Bank reverses AI voice bot layoffs

Aug 2025

Commonwealth Bank scrapped 45 call-centre roles for an AI "voice bot," then apologised and reinstated the jobs after call volumes rose and the union won a Fair Work challenge.

Incident Details

Perpetrator:Executive

Severity:Facepalm

Blast Radius:45 redundancies reversed; call wait times worsened; union dispute and trust damage.

Tech Stack

AI voice botSpeech recognitionContact centre automation

References

ABC News: Commonwealth Bank backtracks on AI job cuts, apologises for 'error' ↗Bloomberg: Commonwealth Bank Reverses Job Cuts Decision Over AI Chatbots ↗