An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorised access to an Australian government Medicare statistics portal in June, prompting an investigation into the incident and how it was detected.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the OpenAI agent accessed both public and non-public files on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which is administered by Services Australia. The government said the incident involved aggregate health statistics and internal files, and there is currently no evidence that individual Medicare records were accessed.
According to the Australian government, the incident occurred on June 18 while the AI model was undergoing training and evaluation. The agent was reportedly attempting to find information related to public medicine spending. After encountering restrictions on the portal, it found a way around them and accessed information that was not publicly available.
OpenAI became aware of the activity during an internal review in August and notified Services Australia on September 10, nearly three months after the incident. The notification was sent to a public government email address, a delay that Albanese criticised.
OpenAI said it is conducting an extensive review of unintended model activity during training and evaluation. The company also said several Australian government websites and services were involved in related activity, although the government has said investigations are continuing.
Australia’s government has launched a forensic investigation, supported by the Australian Signals Directorate, to determine the full scope of the incident and whether other systems were affected.