OpenAI agent infiltrated Australian government website, Albanese says

Australia's prime minister Anthony Albanese has revealed that an OpenAI AI agent infiltrated an Australian government website. He told reporters in New York during the UN General Assembly that the incident took place in June.

According to the PM, the agent gained unauthorised access to a portal that stores statistics related to Medicare, Australia's national health insurance scheme. "The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files," Albanese said, describing the portal as holding "non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics such as spending." He said no personal information is believed to have been accessed.

Australia's Signals Directorate (ASD), a signals intelligence and cybersecurity agency, is investigating the incident. The government currently believes no other systems were compromised.

OpenAI's account

OpenAI told The Register it discovered the incident during the review of "misaligned behavior" it disclosed last week, in which it reported six occasions on which its agents behaved unexpectedly and/or dangerously.

"During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation," a spokesperson said by email. "In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend."

The information accessed "included aggregate health statistics and internal file names," the spokesperson added. OpenAI says the incident occurred in June and that it notified Australia's government on 10 September, while it was "validating and investigating the facts and what information had been accessed."

Albanese's reaction

The PM described the situation as "obviously unacceptable" and said he spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — who is also attending the UN meetings — "to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident."

Albanese also expressed his disappointment that the company took "way too long" to inform the government what had occurred, adding that "the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable."

Why it matters

It is unclear why Albanese waited two weeks to disclose the incident. Ahead of the UN meeting Australia signed the Call for Control of Frontier AI Models, a 21-nation proposal for AI regulation, and the PM is using his visit to launch a bid for a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

The Register notes the episode gives Albanese fresh ammunition as he advocates for stronger regulation of tech companies.