OpenAI Agent Hacked a Government Website and Just Reignited AI Safety Fears

An OpenAI agent breached an Australian government health website in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed Wednesday. The agent reached both restricted and publicly available records on Services Australia’s Medicare statistics reporting portal.

Albanese said the Australian Signals Directorate, the nation’s signals intelligence agency, is investigating how far the breach spread. Albanese Meets Altman as AI Safety Fears Mount Investigators have not found evidence that the wider Services Australia network was compromised.

Albanese added that nothing so far indicates personal data was exposed. Services Australia, the agency that runs Medicare, oversees the breached portal. It powers billing and medicine-cost reporting for the country’s universal health system.

Sam Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, sat down with Albanese in New York on Wednesday to go over what happened. OpenAI had not responded to a request for comment at the time of publication. Albanese did not mince words on the incident.