Australia’s top bank warns corporate AI drives up costs and creates ‘work slop’
▼ Summary
– CBA chief executive Matt Comyn used the term ‘work slop’ to describe low-quality AI output in corporate workflows.
– Token-billed AI costs scale with task complexity, posing a problem for large corporate buyers.
– Comyn flagged two AI-adoption issues that large corporate buyers have been working to address.
Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn is warning companies that indiscriminate AI adoption is not only inflating costs but flooding workplaces with what he calls “work slop.” Speaking on Monday, Comyn pointed to two major pitfalls facing large corporate buyers: the hidden expense of token-based AI pricing and the declining quality of AI-generated output that now clogs internal workflows.
As more organizations rush to embed generative AI into daily operations, Comyn cautioned that the per-token billing model scales sharply with task complexity, making what seems like a small experiment surprisingly expensive at production scale. At the same time, the sheer volume of low-quality AI content , or “work slop” , is undermining productivity rather than boosting it.
Comyn’s remarks underscore a growing realization among enterprise leaders: AI doesn’t automatically improve efficiency, and without careful governance, it can introduce new layers of friction and cost. The CBA chief’s blunt terminology signals that even the most enthusiastic corporate adopters are now grappling with the messy reality of large-scale AI deployment.
(Source: The Next Web)
