Government investigates penalties as OpenAI speaks on Medicare hack

The federal government is investigating whether OpenAI could be penalised after it was revealed an artificial intelligence (AI) agent hacked into a Medicare portal.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed on Thursday an agent linked to the developer behind popular chatbot ChatGPT gained unauthorised access to the public–facing Medicare Statistics Reporting Service Portal, administered by Services Australia.

OpenAI said no personal information was accessed during the breach. Albanese echoed this but added investigations are ongoing as he labelled the June incident, which the government was only informed of in September via an email from the tech giant, as “unacceptable”.

The revelations came as AI bosses for OpenAI and Anthropic, who have recently called for a slowdown in development, told the United Nations Security Council of the risks posed by runaway AI.

Albanese, who is currently in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, said he had a phone conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman where he expressed “Australia’s extreme concern about this incident”.

“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 told reporters.

‘Forensic investigation’ underway

Albanese said the Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal is a public–facing portal that contains non–sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics, such as spending.

But a “forensic investigation” is underway, the prime minister said, aided by the Australian Signals Directorate to ascertain more information, including what other government systems were affected.

“This is not something that has precedent, so we’re dealing with very complex issues,” Albanese said.

The prime minister said three other systems may have been affected: the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the NSW Bureau of Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health.

The information accessed during the breach was at the “lower end of sensitivity”, Defence Minister Richard Marles said. The website also had lower security levels than other portals with national security information.

“We keep our most important national security information behind a fortress. This was really kept behind a fence that the AI agent effectively climbed over,” Marles told ABC Radio National on Thursday.

Marles said despite the impact appearing to be “relatively minor”, it was nonetheless a “really serious incident”. While AI offered “huge potential to benefit humanity”, the incident underscored a need for it to be “developed with enormous care”, he said.

Asked if OpenAI would face penalties, Marles said it was something the federal government was “working through” as it examined the “legal situation” around the breach.

“And what it means to have gained an unauthorised access, albeit in an unintended way. So, that is one of the questions that we’re continuing to investigate through the task force,” he said.

OpenAI responds

OpenAI said its review found no evidence its model accessed patient records. Rather, it said the model had accessed aggregate health statistics and internal file names. It then sent an email to a Services Australia inbox advising of the breach.

“As we’ve shared publicly, OpenAI is conducting an extensive review of misaligned model activity during training and evaluation and notifying third parties when our review identifies potential impacts to their systems,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement.

“During this review, we identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as our models attempted to look up answers, and available statistics for questions about Australia during an internal evaluation. In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.”

News of the breach coincides with the prime minister urging countries at the UN to implement safeguards for AI as the technology rapidly expands.

United States President Donald Trump has urged for an acceleration of AI, calling fears around it a “hoax”.

Albanese was one of more than 20 signatories to a joint statement calling for more restraints on AI.

The statement said while the technology had many potential benefits, such as those in medical research, the downsides remained a significant concern.

— With additional reporting by the Australian Associated Press.

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