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Applied AI in Australia

Australian entries are large-employer deployments — Microsoft Copilot for every member of staff at Western Sydney University, an AI fraud agent at Commonwealth Bank — under a National AI Plan published in December 2025.

AI readiness
0.73
Rank 15 of 171 — IMF AI Preparedness Index
On the record
8
entries across 6 industries
National programme
2025
National AI Plan — A$29.9m for an AI Safety Institute
National programme

National AI Plan

Announced 2025, A$29.9m for an AI Safety Institute. Its pillars are infrastructure and capability, adoption and skills, safety and trust.

Services 67.5% · Industry 23.9% · Agriculture 2.3% of gross value added — World Bank, 2025

Kind
Role
8 entries

Finance & Insurance

2

Commonwealth Bank says its AI fraud agent cut losses by more than 20%.

DeploymentFinance & InsuranceAustralia5 Feb 2026

ANZ puts Salesforce AI agents in front of business bankers

ANZ — ANZ has put Salesforce's Agentforce 360, AI agents for business bankers, into its bankers' new customer relationship management tool, claiming to be the first Asia-Pacific bank to deploy it at scale. The nationally rolled-out, Agentforce-backed CRM replaces a legacy platform and merges data from 20 separate systems into one dashboard, cutting time bankers spend switching systems, ANZ says.

Business bankeranz.com.au
DeploymentFinance & InsuranceAustralia2026

Commonwealth Bank's AI fraud agent cut losses by more than 20%

Commonwealth Bank of Australia's agentic AI fraud detection, built in-house in about three months, helped cut fraud losses more than 20% in the first half of its 2026 financial year year-on-year, the bank says. Watching over 80 million signals a day, the fraud agent helped create or update three-quarters of card-fraud rules, with human approval. James Roberts, general manager of fraud and scams, reported this in April 2026; no independent evaluation is published.

Fraud analystcommbank.com.au

Transport & Logistics

2
DeploymentTransport & LogisticsAustralia10 Sep 2026

Brisbane will time 37 intersections with AI from early 2027

Brisbane City Council — Brisbane City Council said it will hand traffic signal timing at 37 intersections to AI — 22 along Logan Road and 15 along Kelvin Grove Road — in a six-month trial beginning early in 2027. The AI traffic signal system is to read traffic volumes and queue lengths at each intersection and work out the best light sequence from them, learning over time, suggesting interventions to operators and adapting to weather and major events. The council's smart traffic signals plan follows a separately announced trial at one intersection in Petrie, north of the city.

Traffic signal engineerabc.net.au
DeploymentTransport & LogisticsAustralia27 Aug 2026

Moreton Bay will run Australia's first self-directing AI traffic signals

City of Moreton Bay — The City of Moreton Bay will run Australia's first AI traffic lights trial at the junction of Paper Avenue and Moreton Parade in Petrie, using SWARCO software that controls signal movements in real time on active demand instead of stepping through fixed phases. Cameras and 3D LiDAR sensors are to tell passenger vehicles, heavy transport, cyclists and pedestrians apart, with the system learning local patterns and recalculating sequences on the spot. Testing was set to start in September 2026 and the AI signal control trial runs to 2029; no source confirms the switch-on day.

Traffic signal engineercarsguide.com.au

Education & Training

1

Western Sydney University has given Microsoft Copilot to all staff.

DeploymentEducation & TrainingAustralia22 Jul 2026

Western Sydney University gives Microsoft Copilot to all staff

Western Sydney University — Western Sydney University has made Microsoft 365 Copilot available to all staff, casuals included, and Higher Degree Research candidates from 16 July 2026, bringing generative AI in higher education to presentations, meeting summaries and document drafting. After a 100-user pilot, vice-chancellor George Williams tied the move to student success, and the university claims to be first in New South Wales and second in Australia to give all staff enterprise-grade Copilot.

Faculty / staffwesternsydney.edu.au

Government & Public Sector

1

Western Australia Police scanned 130,000 faces in a live facial-recognition trial.

DeploymentGovernment & Public SectorAustralia11 Aug 2026

WA Police scan 130,000 faces in live recognition trial

Western Australia Police — Western Australia Police have scanned over 130,000 people in Perth and Fremantle since a live facial recognition trial began in June 2026, using NEC's Neoface m40 software from a marked van at major events and crowded places. Real-time checks compare faces against a watchlist of missing people, registered child sex offenders and people with outstanding arrest warrants, and matches alert nearby officers.

Police officerabc.net.au

Healthcare & Life Sciences

1

Metro South Health has rolled an ambient AI scribe out to clinicians across the Queensland service.

DeploymentHealthcare & Life SciencesAustralia2 Sep 2026

Queensland health service rolls out ambient AI scribe to clinicians

Metro South Health — Metro South Health began deploying Heidi's ambient AI scribe in June 2026, a rollout running through the following year. The scribe hears consultations and writes clinicians' clinical documentation for them, after a 2025 trial in which 92 per cent of participating clinicians spent less time on administration.

Hospital clinicianpulseit.news

Retail & Consumer

1

Woolworths has given an agentic AI assistant to 200,000 staff.

DeploymentRetail & ConsumerAustralia28 Apr 2026

Woolworths gives agentic AI assistant to 200,000 staff

Woolworths Group — Woolworths has made its Olive tool an agentic AI assistant for all roughly 200,000 group staff, live a week before an executive described it at a conference. Combining search and chat, it adds requested items to carts, suggests recipes from meal photos and offers cheaper or organic swaps, while in-house 'agentic judges' vet answers for accuracy and compliance first.

Supermarket team memberitnews.com.au
Latest on the record
  • DeploymentBrisbane will time 37 intersections with AI from early 2027Transport & Logistics10 Sep 2026abc.net.au
  • DeploymentMoreton Bay will run Australia's first self-directing AI traffic signalsTransport & Logistics27 Aug 2026carsguide.com.au
  • DeploymentWestern Sydney University gives Microsoft Copilot to all staffEducation & Training22 Jul 2026westernsydney.edu.au
  • DeploymentCommonwealth Bank's AI fraud agent cut losses by more than 20%Finance & Insurance2026commbank.com.au
Asia-Pacific
Australia0.73Singapore0.80South Korea0.73China0.64Japan0.73Azerbaijan—India0.49Malaysia0.63Pakistan0.37Hong Kong0.70Philippines0.50Cambodia—Kyrgyzstan—Armenia—Cyprus—Thailand0.54Brunei—Georgia—Macao—Tajikistan—Fiji—Guam—Kazakhstan—Maldives—Papua New Guinea—Taiwan—Uzbekistan—
Method and sources

Every entry on this page is a named organisation putting AI to work in a real job, taken from the State of Applied AI record. Each one is traced to the report it came from and dated, and where a figure is the organisation’s own the entry says so rather than presenting it as an independent result. Readiness, ecosystem and policy figures, where shown, are attributed on the card to the body that published them.

The record is maintained continuously by the Industrial Research Unit of the Straits Institute for Applied AI: entries are added as they are found and verified, not on a schedule, and nothing is published without an open source behind it. It currently holds 1114 entries across 249 countries.