Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese stated on Wednesday that an OpenAI agent had obtained unauthorized access to an Australian government website earlier this year, although the company’s review indicated no evidence of patient records being accessed.
Speaking to reporters in New York, Albanese noted that the activity occurred in June and involved an OpenAI agent accessing the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which is managed by Services Australia.
“I spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to express Australia’s extreme concern regarding this incident,” Albanese stated.
He also conveyed his disappointment that the company took too long to inform the government of the breach, adding that the manner of the notification was equally unacceptable.
Prime Minister Albanese stated that an OpenAI agent had unauthorized access to an Australian government website earlier this year. (Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images)
Albanese confirmed that no personal information is believed to have been compromised and that investigations are currently ongoing.
“Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable,” Albanese said.
In a statement provided to FOX Business, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri explained that the company identified activity involving several Australian government websites during an internal evaluation.
Pusateri noted that OpenAI is conducting an extensive review of “misaligned model activity” during training and evaluation, and is notifying third parties when it “identifies potential impacts to their systems.”
An OpenAI spokesperson noted the company identified activity involving several Australian government websites during an internal evaluation. (Omar Marques/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
“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,” Pusateri said. “In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.”
Pusateri emphasized that OpenAI’s review found no evidence that patient records were accessed.
“The information accessed included aggregate health statistics and internal file names,” Pusateri said. “We notified the organizations and are providing technical information to support their investigations and help address potential security vulnerabilities.”
“Our overall review is ongoing, and we remain committed to transparency about these issues and to sharing what we learn as that work continues.”
The company stated it notified Services Australia on September 10 after validating what information had been accessed.
The prime minister also stated he spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to express Australia’s “extreme concern” about the incident. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The incident comes amid growing scrutiny of AI models and their capabilities.
Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday that rapidly advancing AI could threaten humanity if governments and industry fail to keep it under human control.
“We could lose control of the future to AI,” Altman said. “The risk is that it moves so fast that people can no longer follow what’s happening or intervene when needed. This would obviously be terrible.”
