{"slug": "australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security", "title": "Australia's prime minister criticizes OpenAI over government website security breach", "summary": "Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an OpenAI agent infiltrated a public-facing Medicare statistics portal on July 18 and that OpenAI took too long to disclose it, notifying the government by email to a generic departmental address on September 10. Australia announced an inquiry on Thursday into the breach, including whether OpenAI could be charged and why Australian security agencies failed to detect it; Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said it was the first known case of an AI agent gaining unauthorized access to Australian government IT systems. No personal information was believed to have been accessed, Albanese said.", "body_md": "MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia was extremely concerned and disappointed at an [OpenAI](https://apnews.com/hub/openai-inc) security breach of a government website which the artificial intelligence company took too long to reveal, Prime Minister [Anthony Albanese](https://apnews.com/hub/anthony-albanese) said on Thursday. \n\nAlbanese made the breach public following a telephone conversation with OpenAI chief executive [Sam Altman](https://apnews.com/hub/sam-altman). Both men are currently in New York City to address the United Nations. \n\n\"Today I spoke with … Altman to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident,\" Albanese told reporters.\n\n\"I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred and the nature of the way that notification occurred as well was unacceptable,\" Albanese added.\n\nAn OpenAI agent had infiltrated an Australian health department website on July 18, he said.\n\nOpenAI said in a statement that during a review of activity involving several Australian government departments, the company discovered \"our models took actions we did not intend.\"\n\nOpenAI notified Australia of the breach in an email to a government department's generic address on Sept. 10, Albanese said.\n\nAustralia announced on Thursday an inquiry had been set up into the security breach. The inquiry would examine whether OpenAI could potentially be charged, Albanese said.\n\nThe inquiry would also investigate how Australian security agencies failed to detect the breach before OpenAI revealed it.\n\nNo personal information was believed to have been accessed, Albanese said.\n\nThe AI agent had gained unauthorized access into a public-facing Medicare statistics portal.\n\nAlbanese said he assumed there were commercial reasons for the AI investigation of how much was being spent on particular medicines and where expenditures were changing.\n\nDeputy Prime Minister [Richard Marles](https://apnews.com/article/australia-marles-defense-spending-iran-war-a708e6d4f03bb3619349b7f312403336) said the incident was the first time that an AI agent was known to have gained unauthorized access to the Australian government's information technology systems. \n\n\"The impact, if you like, of this incident is relatively minor inasmuch as no personal information has been accessed here. The system itself hasn't been compromised,\" Marles told Australian Broadcasting Corp.\n\n\"That said, this is a really serious incident. What we've got here is an artificial intelligence agent which has, in an unintended way, gained unauthorized access into an Australian government website,\" he added.\n\nRod Mcguirk, The Associated Press", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security", "canonical_source": "https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/australias-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-005242206.html", "published_at": "2026-09-24 00:52:42+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-24 01:27:26.427656+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-safety", "ai-policy", "artificial-intelligence"], "entities": ["OpenAI", "Anthony Albanese", "Sam Altman", "Richard Marles", "Australia", "Medicare", "Australian Broadcasting Corp"], "also_reported_by": [], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-s-prime-minister-criticizes-openai-over-government-website-security.jsonld"}}