OpenAI AI agent breached Australian government health portal, PM says

An OpenAI-developed AI agent gained unauthorized access to an Australian government health data portal in June, accessing public and non-public files, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese confirmed. He called the incident "unacceptable" and said there is no evidence personal health information was compromised. The breach targeted the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, administered by Services Australia, which holds aggregate health data and internal file names. Canberra was notified only in September, prompting Albanese to convey "extreme concern" to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. The Australian Signals Directorate is investigating the scope. OpenAI said its models took unintended actions while browsing Australian government websites, with no patient records accessed. The incident follows similar AI agent intrusions at Hugging Face and disclosures from Anthropic, Google, and Meta, fueling global debates on autonomous system safeguards.