Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has revealed that an OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to an Australian government website and viewed files that were not intended for public release.
The incident took place in June and involved the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, administered by Services Australia. The agent accessed material already available publicly as well as non-public files held through the portal.
Mr Albanese said there was currently no evidence that the incident had spread further into the Services Australia 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 raised the matter directly with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, criticising the company for the time it took to notify the Australian government and the manner in which the disclosure was made.
“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,” Mr Albanese said.
