{
 "public_id": "AIR-2025-0109",
 "incident_id": "2025-08-commonwealth-bank-ai-voicebot-job-cut-reversal",
 "date_disclosed": "2025-08-21",
 "date_occurred": "2025-07-01",
 "title": "Commonwealth Bank of Australia reversed 45 AI-driven customer service job cuts and apologised after its AI voice bot failed to reduce call volumes",
 "class": "safety_failure",
 "attack_surface": "consumer_chatbot",
 "initial_vector": "deployment_decision_based_on_overstated_agent_capability",
 "agent_capability_abused": [
  "automated_call_handling"
 ],
 "target_product": "CBA AI voice bot",
 "target_vendor": "Commonwealth Bank of Australia",
 "autonomy_level": "semi_autonomous",
 "impact_realized": true,
 "impact_type": [
  "operational_failure",
  "employment_harm"
 ],
 "blast_radius": "45 customer service roles cut then reinstated; increased overtime and managers drafted onto phones",
 "cve": [],
 "taxonomy": {
  "owasp_asi": [
   "ASI09"
  ],
  "mitre_atlas": [],
  "labels": [
   "automation_overestimate",
   "workforce_replacement",
   "reversal"
  ]
 },
 "defense_present": null,
 "defense_bypassed": false,
 "fix_shipped": "CBA withdrew the redundancies and apologised to affected staff on 2025-08-21",
 "primary_sources": [
  "https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/22/commonwealth_ban_chatbot_fail_rehiring/"
 ],
 "verified_quote": "the introduction of AI had reduced call volumes by allowing automation of simple queries",
 "confidence": "high",
 "notes": "The Finance Sector Union said call volumes actually rose after the bot went in, leading to overtime and managers answering phones; the bank conceded its assessment that the roles were not required was an error. Bloomberg and ABC Australia broke it; theregister.com is the source of record. Non-adversarial operational failure of a deployed agent with documented employment consequences - the clearest example of the layoff/replacement category. The Register notes it is unclear whether the AI itself underperformed or the bank botched the analysis.",
 "risk_category": "product_misuse",
 "risk_secondary": [],
 "risk_subcategory": "Unclassified",
 "risk_sub_secondary": [],
 "ai_entity": "generative",
 "agency": "human_acted_on_output",
 "agency_debatable": true,
 "agency_reason": "the bot underperformed; managers made the redundancy decision on that basis",
 "vector_family": "other",
 "vector_detail": "deployment_decision_based_on_overstated_agent_capability",
 "guardrail_kind": [
  "unknown"
 ],
 "guardrail_outcome": "silent",
 "xrefs": {
  "aiid": [],
  "atlas": [],
  "cve": [],
  "ghsa": []
 },
 "primary_asi": "ASI09",
 "agent_framework": "unknown",
 "model_provider": "unknown",
 "model_name": "",
 "detection_mechanism": "unknown",
 "tool_access": "unknown",
 "financial_loss_band": "unknown",
 "eai_category": "human_manipulation",
 "eai_domain": "agent_behaviour",
 "eai_secondary": [],
 "eai_reason": "impact rule: human_manipulation",
 "asi_curated": [],
 "asi_scope": "in_scope",
 "asi_provenance": "rule",
 "asi_reason": "ASI09 (eai_category=human_manipulation)",
 "submitted_by": "EAI Internal"
}