{"id":673841,"date":"2026-05-16T02:32:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:32:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/673841\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T02:32:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T02:32:14","slug":"done-right-ai-is-invisible-meet-ranil-boteju-commbank-chief-ai-officer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/673841\/","title":{"rendered":"Done right, AI is \u2018invisible\u2019: meet Ranil Boteju, CommBank Chief AI Officer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranil Boteju is back at CommBank<\/a> for his third stint, this time as Chief AI Officer. It\u2019s a role that brought him back to Australia after more than a decade overseas, where he held senior data, analytics and AI roles across major global financial institutions and telecommunications companies.<\/p>\n

For Boteju, the move was both a return to a familiar organisation and an opportunity to help shape how AI is used safely and effectively across one of Australia\u2019s largest companies.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always found the culture here was a really good fit for me,\u201d Boteju says. \u201cIt\u2019s an organisation where, if you do well at CBA, you can actually impact Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

The opportunity to shape AI at scale<\/p>\n

Boteju says CommBank\u2019s ambition, capability and focus on responsible AI were key factors in deciding to return. He says the bank has already built strong foundations for its AI efforts, from technical talent and business leadership to partnerships with leading AI companies.<\/p>\n

CommBank is ranked fourth in the world in the Evident AI Index and first in the Asia Pacific region<\/a>. The Index measures maturity on AI within the banking sector globally and recognises CommBank for its leadership in Talent Development and Responsible AI Leadership in particular.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve amassed an incredible array of talent,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m amazed at how there is so much talent not just in my own team, but federated across the business. That includes technical people, engineers, data scientists and developers, as well as business leaders who understand AI and want to reimagine what we do.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition, \u201cthe ambition is sky high. We\u2019ve got some amazing partnerships with some of the best AI companies in the world\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the place to work if you want to work with the best AI talent, use the best tools and the best platforms,\u201d Boteju says, describing his own role as helping bring together the work already happening across the bank and supporting teams to use AI in a consistent, safe and scalable way.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo deliver AI at an organisation, you need a village,\u201d Boteju says. \u201cMy role is to coordinate a whole group of people across the bank to reimagine CommBank in the context of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI as part of everyone\u2019s job<\/p>\n

Boteju says one of the most important lessons from his global experience is that AI can\u2019t be confined to one specialist team. \u201cWe need to think about AI as something that\u2019s going to impact every single aspect of the bank, and therefore we need to work with everyone,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI is part of everyone\u2019s job. It can\u2019t be just concentrated in one team.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

He compares the shift to the digital and mobile transformation that reshaped banking more than a decade ago. In the early days, digital work often sat in specialised teams, but over time, it became part of how every team worked.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI will be exactly the same,\u201d he says, saying that achieving that means giving all teams across the bank the skills, tools, platforms and guardrails they need to use AI safely and effectively.<\/p>\n

Using AI where it makes a difference<\/p>\n

Boteju says the big AI opportunity isn\u2019t just to make existing work happen faster. It\u2019s to apply AI areas where it can help customers and colleagues in ways that were previously too complex, too time-consuming or impossible to scale with human effort alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really important that we\u2019re clear about where we want to deploy AI,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Boteju says his goal is to help CommBank use AI in a way that improves customer experiences, supports colleagues and helps set a standard for responsible adoption more broadly. And he says his own view very much aligns with the direction being set at CommBank. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing for me to land somewhere where how I\u2019ve thought about things is exactly how the organisation thinks about things,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI genuinely feel that across the bank, there\u2019s a critical mass of leaders that really understand AI,\u201d Boteju says. \u201cThey also want to deliver it in a way that\u2019s beneficial to society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moving safely and with confidence<\/p>\n

Boteju says safety, privacy and accuracy must remain central to how AI is designed and used. \u201cWe want to do this safely,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to do this in a way that respects customers\u2019 privacy. We want to do it in a way where we know the outcomes of our tools are correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, he says organisations need to be prepared to test, learn and move with confidence.<\/p>\n

Being overly cautious is also a risk, he says. \u201cHaving a risk appetite that enables us to test things is going to be critical.\u201d<\/p>\n

A future where AI becomes embedded<\/p>\n

Asked to describe the future of AI in one word, Boteju says AI should become \u201cinvisible\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cI think in about 10 years\u2019 time, AI will be embedded into everything we do in the same way that electricity was,\u201d he says. \u201cAI will be invisible. We won\u2019t even know it\u2019s there. It\u2019ll be making our lives more productive and helping us. That\u2019s how I want it to land.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ranil Boteju is back at CommBank for his third stint, this time as Chief AI Officer. It\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673842,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,139524,44,320413,105],"class_list":["post-673841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cba-story","tag-news","tag-our-people","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=673841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673841\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673842"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}