A 65-year-old former bank teller at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Kathryn Sullivan, has been fired by the bank, only for her to discover that the chatbot she had spent weeks training was the reason she lost her job.
According to The Sun, Sullivan, who served the bank for 25 years, was made redundant in July.
Sullivan said she was completely unaware that her work was preparing a chatbot to replace her before being made redundant in July, ending a long career with the bank.“I was completely shell-shocked, alongside my colleague,” she said. “We just feel like we were nothing, we were a number.”
Ms Sullivan, who had supported technologies aimed at improving customer service, said she was blindsided by the decision.
Her final duties involved scripting and testing chatbot responses for CBA’s Bumblebee AI, and she would step in whenever the bot failed to answer customer queries.
“Inadvertently, I was training a chatbot that took my job,” she said.
She added that while she sees a purpose for AI in the workplace, safeguards are necessary, “While I embrace the use of AI and I can see a purpose for it in the workplace and outside, I believe there needs to be some sort of regulation to prevent copyright (infringements) … or replacing humans.”
Following the redundancies, CBA – which reported a $10.25 billion profit in the past financial year – initially failed to respond to Ms Sullivan for more than a week.
“They ghosted me for eight business days before they answered any of my questions,” she said.
The bank later admitted the AI rollout had been a mistake after customer calls surged, showing the technology could not fully replace staff.
A tough reminder that while AI can boost efficiency, rushing to replace human workers without proper planning often backfires—experience and judgment can’t just be scripted into a bot.