Artificial intelligence means many things to different people.
For some, the arrival of large language models is a threat to jobs and livelihoods, or even humanity itself.
But AI does bring change for good, as Australia's biggest retail bank has discovered.
Some years ago, Commonwealth Bank started receiving calls from customers warning that its digital payment platforms were being misused to perpetuate abuse.
In one case, for as little as one cent, a man was sending hundreds of payments to pepper his ex-partner with horrific language and threats in the payment description.
"She had blocked his number, she had blocked his social media, she had actually changed addresses," CBA customer advocate Angela MacMillan told AAP.
"The last channel that he was able to use to continue to perpetuate abuse ... was by sending low-value transactions to her repeatedly.
"There were a few hundred - I think it had cost him $2.38 to send message after message."
At the time, CBA estimates, more than 8000 customers had received abusive messages embedded in transactions in just three months.
Since then, CBA has fed data into an AI model, allowing it to learn to block certain words, such as profanity or phrases picked up as insulting, coercive or threatening, as well as somewhat subtle wording to evade detection.
"It was things like 'when are you coming home', 'you looked beautiful in your purple jumper at the train station this morning'," Ms MacMillan said.
The technology has prevented more than one million abusive messages from reaching victim-survivors since 2020.
However, it's also flagging about 3600 high-risk transactions a year.
Is the frequency decreasing? No, it's not, but Ms MacMillan says CBA is blocking transactions and manually intervening in high-risk cases at a higher rate.
"So that is a positive ... and look, it is symptomatic of the broader challenges of domestic and family violence in this country, which is increasing," she said.
It's no secret that CBA chief Matt Comyn is a big believer in the value of artificial intelligence to business and society at large.
The bank, which has been training staff to become familiar with AI in their day-to-day work for almost two years, has now produced its first report - Our Approach to Adopting AI - on how it's embedding the models into its operations.
"We aim to share our knowledge as we navigate this rapidly evolving landscape,” Mr Comyn said on Thursday.
One of the bank's other AI wins is in the war against scammers, fraudsters and cybercriminals targeting its customers.
CBA watches more than 20 million payments and sends about 40,350 warning alerts each day via its banking app.
The result has been a 20 per cent reduction in fraud losses in the first half of the current financial year, compared to the same period in 2025.
A lot of this knowledge is shared with other businesses under the anti-scam intelligence loop, set up by the Australian Financial Crimes Exchange and National Anti-Scam Centre.
CBA has also made its AI model to detect abusive transactions available to other banks globally.
Executive general manager and report lead author Alex Matthews says CBA sees significant opportunities with AI but is mindful of the risks.
"One of the things we are really conscious of is Australians' perspectives on AI ... we think that it's an important priority for Australia in terms of adopting this technology, in order that Australia can capture the benefits," he told AAP.
"Trust is obviously fundamental to adoption."
Mr Matthews said it was well known that Australians felt cautious, and the bank's insights suggested their perspectives on AI and banking were broadly similar to their views on the tech in general.
"But we are seeing promising indications," he said.
Victim-survivor Rachael Lloyd, who suffered financial abuse, told AAP CBA's AI work on abuse transactions had been "phenomenal".
"And hopefully, the other banks will continue to follow," she said.
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