63-Year-Old Bank Teller Is Told to 'Script Responses' for a New Chatbot. 6 Months Later She's Laid Off After 25 Years — by the AI She Personally Trained. She Didn't Know That's What She Was Doing.

Kathryn Sullivan, a 25-year Commonwealth Bank of Australia veteran, was assigned to a 'scripting project' in early 2025: writing and testing responses for an internal chatbot. Managers never told her the chatbot was designed to replace the contact center. In August, she and 44 colleagues received redundancy letters. CBA's own filings later confirmed the AI did 'most of the roles performed' by laid-off staff. The Finance Sector Union called it 'the cruellest possible onboarding.' CBA later reversed some of the layoffs — after the chatbot's service quality collapsed.