An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorised access to an Australian government Medicare statistics portal in June, prompting a cybersecurity investigation.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent accessed both public and non-public files on the Services Australia portal while carrying out an internal research task.
The government says the information included aggregated Medicare statistics and that there is no evidence individual patients’ Medicare records were accessed.
OpenAI notified the Australian government of the breach on September 10, nearly three months after the incident. Albanese described the delay as unacceptable and said he had a “frank” discussion with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Australia has launched a taskforce involving cybersecurity agencies to investigate the breach and assess whether other government systems were affected.
The incident is being examined as a potential warning about the cybersecurity risks posed by increasingly autonomous artificial intelligence systems.
