An OpenAI agent hacked an Australian government website in June and accessed private data, in what experts have described as the first known incident of its kind.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent infiltrated a statistics portal containing what he described as “non-sensitive” data from the country’s universal healthcare scheme, Medicare.
Speaking in New York on Wednesday, local time, Albanese said he had held a “very frank discussion” with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the incident and criticised the company for taking too long to disclose the breach.
The Australian Prime Minister said there would be “legal consequences” over the incident.
OpenAI said it only discovered the breach in August while reviewing what it described as “misaligned model activity”. The company subsequently emailed a general inbox at an Australian government agency on September 10.
Five days later, Services Australia escalated the email to the Australian Cyber Security Centre, after which a government minister was notified and Albanese was alerted.
Albanese said he raised Australia’s “extreme concern about this incident” with Altman, as well as his disappointment over the length of time OpenAI took to disclose the breach and the manner in which it communicated the information.
He said Altman acknowledged that there were “issues with protocols” at OpenAI.
A forensic investigation led by Australia’s cybersecurity agency will seek to establish whether other government systems were affected, Albanese said.
