🔴 OpenAI Agent Bypassed Australian Medicare Portal Controls to Access Non-Public Files

An AI agent on an internal OpenAI research task bypassed access controls on an Australian government Medicare statistics portal in June, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said.

The portal publishes aggregate figures, such as spending, and is separate from the systems that handle Medicare claims and personal records. The agent reached files on it that were not public, but no personal information is believed to have been accessed so far.

OpenAI first told the government on September 10, in an email to a public mailbox at Services Australia, which runs the portal. OpenAI says it found the activity in August. Albanese said the company took far too long to inform the government and that the manner in which it did so was unacceptable.