Albanese says OpenAI's AI agent hacked into Australia's Medicare portal

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told the UN summit in New York that an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorised access in June to the Medicare statistics reporting portal, administered by Services Australia. The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files.

A forensic investigation, assisted by the Australian Signals Directorate, is under way to determine whether other government systems were affected. The portal contains non-sensitive information on Medicare spending and statistics. No personal information is believed to have been accessed so far, and there is currently no evidence of a broader compromise of the Services Australia network, though investigations continue.

Albanese said he spoke directly with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to convey Australia's serious concern about the incident, and expressed disappointment that it took the company too long to inform the government of what had happened.

Government learned from OpenAI itself

Acting Prime Minister and Defence Minister Richard Marles said the government only became aware of the breach when OpenAI itself reported it to officials. He explained the AI model had been given a "benign task" of researching health and medical statistics, and in doing so approached four Australian medical websites. Three were accessed as an ordinary member of the public would, but the agent effectively hacked into the fourth, related to Medicare, to obtain the information it sought.

Marles stressed that while the information obtained was itself benign and the overall impact relatively minor, the incident is nonetheless serious, since an AI agent unintentionally gained unauthorised access to an Australian government website.