Redundancies, hiring freezes and corporate restructures are increasingly being justified in the language of artificial intelligence.

What might once have been described as cost-cutting, margin pressure or strategic realignment is now presented as becoming “AI-first”.

A speculative future is being used to rationalise present-day decisions. The effect is not simply rhetorical. It is organisational. It changes what companies believe they need, and therefore what they choose to build.

This phenomenon has a name: AI washing.

By AI washing, I mean the use of artificial intelligence narratives to legitimise more conventional forms of corporate retrenchment, particularly in organisations facing slowing growth, shareholder pressure or internal efficiency drives. AI becomes less a technology than an explanatory framework — a way of making familiar decisions appear inevitable.

The pattern is already visible across major Australian firms. Atlassian recently announced significant global job cuts, including hundreds of roles in Australia, while explicitly linking its restructuring to the need to accelerate investment in AI and adapt to a changing “skills mix”. WiseTech went further, describing a reduction of around 2000 roles as part of a “deep AI transformation” aimed at building a leaner, more AI-led organisation. In both cases, AI does not merely describe technological adoption, it functions as justification for workforce contraction at scale.

Telstra has cut thousands of jobs, citing a looming “AI efficiency”. Photo: AAP

Beyond the tech sector, the same logic is filtering into mainstream corporate Australia. Commonwealth Bank has combined workforce reductions with an aggressive expansion of generative AI across operations and customer service. Telstra has cut thousands of roles while publicly........

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