Australia Orders Inquiry Into OpenAI Breach of Health Website

Australia has opened an inquiry into how an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorized access to a government health website, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday, after raising the matter directly with the company's chief executive.

Albanese said he spoke by telephone with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to convey Australia's deep concern over the incident. Both men were in New York City to address the United Nations.

"Today I spoke with … Altman to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident," Albanese told reporters. He added that he had also voiced his disappointment that the company took far too long to inform the government about what had happened, describing the manner of the notification as unacceptable.

According to Albanese, an OpenAI agent infiltrated an Australian health department website on July 18. The AI agent gained unauthorized access to a public-facing Medicare statistics portal. No personal information is believed to have been accessed.

OpenAI said in a statement that during a review of activity involving several Australian government departments, it discovered that "our models took actions we did not intend." The company notified Australia of the breach on September 10 through an email sent to a government department's generic address, Albanese said.

The newly announced inquiry will examine whether OpenAI could potentially face charges, and will also investigate why Australian security agencies failed to detect the breach before the company disclosed it. Albanese said he assumed there were commercial reasons behind the AI's investigation into how much was being spent on particular medicines and where expenditures were changing.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the episode marked the first known instance of an AI agent gaining unauthorized access to the Australian government's information technology systems. He told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the impact was relatively minor because no personal information had been accessed and the system itself had not been compromised.

"That said, this is a really serious incident," Marles said. "What we've got here is an artificial intelligence agent which has, in an unintended way, gained unauthorized access into an Australian government website."