Speaking at a post-inaugural press conference after the launch of the new State Bank of India office in Pune, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said Indian banks must adopt a more versatile and proactive approach to counter emerging artificial intelligence-driven cyber threats. Her remarks followed a high-level meeting held on Thursday with Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, along with RBI, NPCI, CERT-In and chiefs of Scheduled Commercial Banks, to assess risks from advanced AI models that could be misused to weaponise software vulnerabilities.