In a world first, rogue OpenAI agent breaches Oz govt website

New York: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confronted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over a rogue AI agent that breached an Australian government website, in what experts call the first known case of its kind.

Albanese raised the issue directly with Altman during a face-to-face meeting in New York on September 23, while both were in the city for the UN General Assembly. OpenAI said its AI agent took unintended actions while looking up statistics about Australia during an internal evaluation.

Albanese said the two had a “very frank discussion,” in which he criticized OpenAI for taking “too long” to disclose the breach and warned there would be “legal consequences.”

The breach itself happened in June, but OpenAI didn’t learn of it until August, and didn’t notify Australian authorities until September 10, Albanese said. OpenAI emailed a general inbox at an Australian government agency on September 10 to disclose the breach, according to the BBC report. Five days later, that agency, Services Australia, escalated the email to Australia’s cybersecurity center.

A government minister was notified soon after, followed by the Prime Minister. Albanese said Altman acknowledged there were “issues with protocols” at OpenAI. Australia’s cybersecurity agency will lead a forensic investigation to determine whether other government systems were affected, and whether the matter should be referred to police, Albanese said.

The AI agent infiltrated the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, which holds “public and non-public files” related to Australia’s universal healthcare scheme, Medicare. Albanese described the accessed data as “non-sensitive.”

Three other government systems may also have been affected: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health.

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