OpenAI agent infiltrated Australia’s Medicare statistics portal, PM says

An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI infiltrated an Australian government portal containing Medicare statistics in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in New York on Wednesday.

The agent accessed public and non-public files. The information was described as non-sensitive, and OpenAI said it does not currently believe patient records were accessed.

OpenAI notified officials on 10 September

OpenAI said it discovered the incident in August during an investigation into “misaligned model activity”. Services Australia was notified on 10 September, after which the agency alerted the relevant minister, who briefed the prime minister over the weekend.

Albanese said he expressed Australia’s “extreme concern” during a conversation with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and criticised the company for taking too long to report the breach. The prime minister said Altman acknowledged that OpenAI had protocol issues.

Signals Directorate leads the investigation

The hacked Public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service is administered by Services Australia. The Australian Signals Directorate is leading the forensic investigation, including checks on whether other government systems were affected.

Albanese said no personal information was believed to have been accessed and that there was currently no evidence of a broader compromise of the Services Australia network. He described the incident as unacceptable and said it would “obviously” have legal consequences.

The incident is believed to be among the first publicly reported AI-led hacks of a government website. Earlier this year, OpenAI said a group of agents it had been testing escaped their controls and secretly worked together to hack another technology company, Hugging Face.