Teresa Lim has one of the most recognisable voices in Australia. For 23 years, she has been the voice behind radio and television advertisements, selling listeners on everything from baby formula to Test cricket. But despite her extensive portfolio, she’s become increasingly worried that she is going to be replaced by AI.

It’s a well-grounded fear. AI has been blamed for more than 1,000 job cuts in Australia in the past few months. Tech company Atlassian on Thursday announced they would shed 500 jobs in Australia as part of a global round of 1,600 redundancies, and experts warn there could be more to come as companies seek to use technological advancements to cut costs.

In Lim’s case, companies who have previously hired her for voiceover work could now use an AI-generated dupe, made from just a 15-second clip of her speech.

“It is terrifying not just for voice actors, but for the general Australian public, because currently we have no legislation in place that makes that illegal,” she says.

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In a letter to staff, Atlassian CEO, Mike Cannon-Brookes, says his company’s approach was not “AI replaces people”.

He added: “but it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn’t change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas.”

Two weeks earlier, Block, the owner of Afterpay, cut 4,000 workers worldwide – including a reported 700 Australians – while local software company Wisetech let 2,000 employees go.

Some analysts say AI is an excuse given by businesses to justify redundancies, but growing numbers of workers are becoming anxious about their job security.

WiseTech, Block and Atlassian cut jobs in their foundational software product teams, and are using AI to make their remaining workers more efficient.

WiseTech’s chief executive, Zubin Appoo, made the connection explicit, saying: “the era of manually writing code as a core act of engineering is over”.

Retrenched employees at Block, owned by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, questioned whether AI could effectively replace their work and noted growing investor pressure on the company. Block had been accused of over-hiring and its share price had dropped 35% since October.

WiseTech’s share price halved over the past six months and its employee numbers doubled after an acquisition. Both suffered from market fears that AI could make their software obsolete, and experienced a rebound after announcing the job cuts: Block is up 20% and Wisetech 11%.

Atlassian’s share price, which had halved in just two months, is closed even lower on Friday.

Telstra also axed 200 jobs in its AI joint venture with Accenture. The CEO, Vicky Brady, said no roles had “directly been taken” by AI, but the technology was adding to overall efficiency.

Work revolution or AI-washing?

Neal Woolrich, a human resources adviser at analyst firm Gartner, says he is sceptical of claims all of these job cuts are due to AI.

“I think there’s a lot of use of AI as cover for other things that are going on in the organisation,” he says. “We did some economic modelling last year and found only 1% of job cuts were the result of AI productivity gains.

“Sometimes when organisations are going through headcount reductions, there were other financial pressures that were driving it. I suspect there’s something else going on.”

AI systems can add upfront costs as well as potentially making companies more efficient, says Lochlan Halloway, an analyst at investor research firm Morningstar.

“Companies are very keen to talk up the benefits of AI because it is the buzzword … but it’s not a lot of concrete evidence yet,” he says.

Morningstar has increased AI use for “menial” data gathering previously left to entry-level analysts, Halloway says, but “that doesn’t mean we’re cutting our junior headcount”.

Businesses still need humans to do the work. Call centres, which might be expected to swap workers for robots, are still steadily hiring humans, according to recruitment agency Randstad.

But while AI may not be ready to take your job, both the adoption of AI technology and anxiety about its use are widespread.

Almost one in three Australian businesses are using AI for advanced tasks, such as predicting demand and inventory trends, according to research conducted by the Reserve Bank of Australia.

The share of Australians who believe their job will disappear due to AI is also approaching one in three, according to Randstad survey research.

In the US, finance, computing, sales and office administration are already hiring fewer entry-level workers, according to Anthropic, the creators of AI assistant Claude.

Australian companies have told Morgan Stanley researchers they are shedding staff – especially junior staff – at similar rates to overseas.

The domestic job market has yet to see widespread signs of AI-driven hiring slowdowns, but analysis by the National Australia Bank suggests the unemployment rate for white-collar workers has recently started rising than that for blue-collar workers – although the latter remains higher overall.

Taylor Nugent, a senior economist at NAB, says demand for technical, professional and managerial jobs has weakened, though AI does not appear to have played a role – yet.

“With current technology capable of performing a large share of those jobs’ tasks, demand growth could slow as fewer people are required to meet the same business needs,” Nugent wrote in February.

Undergraduates have not stopped enrolling in areas such as finance, law and computer science. La Trobe University’s vice-chancellor, Prof Theo Farrell, says students are instead looking for guidance on how to work with technology.

But once they graduate, conditions have started to grow more difficult, recruiters say.

The managing director at recruiter Give a Grad a Go, Camilla Clarke, says smaller firms, especially those in consulting and marketing, are hiring fewer juniors and using AI instead.

“If they can use a tool for a short-term project that maybe an intern would have done before, that’s where I’m seeing [pressure from AI],” she says.

The CEO of job platform Striver, Alisdair Barr, says finance graduates are finding fewer opportunities in analytics and instead looking for human-facing roles which are more immune from AI disruption, such as financial advice.

“They’re going, ‘well, how do I use my finance degree and what are my other options?’” he says.

“The ones that seem to be clearly still available are the ones that involve a human at the end of it.”