OpenAI agent breached Australian government health website, Albanese says
An OpenAI agent gained “unauthorized access” to “non-public files” from an Australian government health website in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday.
The agent — an AI system designed to carry out tasks autonomously — accessed a public portal for Medicare statistics, Albanese said at a press conference in New York while attending the U.N. General Assembly.
The website portal it accessed lets users generate reports on Australia’s public health insurance system and pharmaceutical spending. Albanese said his government could not find a precedent for the incident, although he stopped short of claiming it was a world first.
The prime minister’s disclosure followed his speech at the General Assembly, where he described Australia as “an acknowledged first mover and world leader in digital safety” while warning that AI was posing a range of potential cross-border risks.
