Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorised access to an Australian government website, including files that were not intended to be publicly available.
Mr Albanese confirmed the security incident occurred in June and involved the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which is administered by Services Australia.
“This incident occurred in June this year, and involved an OpenAI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which is administered by Services Australia,” Albanese said.
The AI agent was able to access files already available to the public as well as non-public material through the portal.
However, Mr Albanese said current evidence indicated the breach had not extended further into Services Australia’s network.
“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network. Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable,” he said.
The Prime Minister said he had personally raised the incident with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, criticising the company over both the delay in notifying the Australian government and the way it ultimately disclosed the breach.
“And today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident. And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred, and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.”
The revelation comes as the Australian government grapples with the rapidly evolving risks posed by artificial intelligence and the safeguards needed around the technology.
More to come…
