Pune, April 24 -- 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.

Sitharaman said Indian banks have remained largely free of any major incident involving cyber security violation over the decade...