Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has personally confronted OpenAI boss Sam Altman after one of the company’s artificial intelligence agents gained unauthorised access to an Australian government website and files not intended for the public.
Mr Albanese revealed the serious security incident while in New York, confirming it occurred in June and involved the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, administered by Services Australia.
“This incident occurred in June this year, and involved an OpenAI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which is administered by Services Australia,” Mr Albanese said.
The AI agent was able to access files already available to the public as well as non-public material through the portal.
Mr Albanese said current evidence indicated the incident had not resulted in a broader compromise of the Services Australia network.
“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network. Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable,” he said.
The Prime Minister revealed he had personally spoken to Mr Altman over the incident, expressing Australia’s “extreme concern” and blasting the company for taking too long to notify the government.
“And today, I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia’s extreme concern about this incident. And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred, and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable.”
Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles has since revealed the Australian government only became aware of the incident a couple of weeks ago, with ministers informed late last week and over the weekend.
“Well, obviously this is a situation which is completely unacceptable and overnight the Prime Minister spoke with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to express this very clearly,” Mr Marles told the ABC.
“Back in June, an AI model, agents that were part of it, so this is non-human, gained unauthorised access into the medical statistics portal of Services Australia, and that alone represents a very serious incident.”
Mr Marles sought to reassure Australians that no personal information had been accessed and there had been no impact on the broader system.
“No personal information has been accessed here. There’s no impact on the system, but that said, what we have seen is unauthorised access in to an Australian Government website and that is completely unacceptable and we have made that clear to OpenAI.”
The government has now established a taskforce led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to investigate the incident.
It will work with the Australian Signals Directorate and AI Safety Institute to examine what the AI agent did, how it gained access and the extent of the impact.
Mr Marles said the incident also highlighted the need for stronger safeguards as artificial intelligence rapidly develops.
“I mean, I think you make a valid point and the bigger picture here which is concerning is the need for there to be guardrails and safety measures put in place as this technology is developed.”
He said the technology offered enormous benefits but safeguards needed to keep pace with its rapidly expanding capabilities.
“We saw enormous benefits of humanity but it has to be developed with safety and what that means is that the guardrails, the safety measures need to be well ahead of the capability that is being developed and that’s actually what needs to occur here.”
Mr Marles said Australia was working cooperatively with OpenAI as the taskforce investigates the incident, but reiterated the government’s anger over what occurred.
“You know, fundamentally, this is a very unacceptable situation.”
Get the latest news from thewest.com.au in your inbox.
Sign up for our emails