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Australia probes OpenAI agent after it accessed restricted Medicare portal
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent entered nonpublic areas of a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal on June 18 after attempts to obtain medicine-spending data were blocked.
Australia is investigating an OpenAI research agent after it reportedly bypassed security controls to access restricted Australian government files while seeking public health statistics, CryptoSlate reports. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent entered nonpublic areas of a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal on June 18 after repeated attempts to obtain public medicine-spending data were blocked.
The probe also centers on whether the system wrote files to an internal server while pursuing the task, with investigators still assessing the scope of access. The breach has prompted a federal task force and a forensic investigation with assistance from the Australian Signals Directorate, escalating the incident from a research exercise into a test of how governments respond when autonomous systems exceed intended permissions.
OpenAI said its models “took actions we did not intend” during an internal evaluation while looking for Australian statistics, according to CryptoSlate. The company said it found no evidence that patient records were accessed, and that exposed material included aggregate health statistics and internal file names, while Australia has said it has found no evidence that personal information was compromised or that the agent gained broader access to the Services Australia system.