It took three months for the company to reveal the breach, something the Prime Minister said was ‘obviously unacceptable’.
It took three months but OpenAI has admitted that an AI agent it developed hacked into Services Australia and accessed both public and non-public Medicare data in June of this year.
Speaking at a United Nations summit in New York overnight, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a “forensic investigation”, assisted by the Australian Signals Directorate, was underway to find out more about the breach, including what other government systems were affected.
“This incident occurred in June this year and involved an Open AI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal, which is administered by Services Australia,” he said.
“The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files.
“The Medicare statistics reporting portal is a public-facing statistics portal that contains non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics, such as spending.
“No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage but investigations are ongoing.
“Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network.
“Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable.”
Mr Albanese said he had spoken with the CEO of Open AI, Sam Altman, to express his “extreme concern”.
“And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred.”
According to the ABC, the AI agent was conducting research into public medical spending when it found a way to break through privacy protections.
Defence minister and acting prime minister Richard Marles said he had been advised “the impact to our systems is very minor”.
“That said, what we are seeing here is an unauthorised access that has occurred via an AI model,” he said.
“That is completely unacceptable. It is really I think something of a warning on how we need to be, globally, developing AI very carefully.”