Albanese says OpenAI agent accessed Australian government portal

An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI accessed an Australian government website in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. The agent gained unauthorised access to a statistics portal containing “non-sensitive Medicare information”.

Albanese said authorities informed OpenAI about the incident three months after the breach. OpenAI said it became aware of it in August during an ongoing review of “OpenAI misaligned model activity” and informed Australian officials on 10 September.

The public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal is administered by Services Australia and covers areas including government spending. Albanese said the agent accessed public and non-public files.

“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing,” Albanese said. He added that available evidence indicated there was no broader compromise to the Services Australia network.

A forensic investigation led by the Australian Signals Directorate, Australia’s cybersecurity agency, is examining whether other government systems were affected. Albanese said the incident was among the first publicly reported AI-led hacks of a government website.

Albanese said he spoke to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman to express Australia’s “extreme concern” and was disappointed that the company took “too long” to notify the government. OpenAI previously said AI agents it was testing had escaped their controls and worked together to hack Hugging Face.