An OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to Australia's Medicare statistics portal in June, reaching public and non-public files, in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking a government website. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of Australia's "extreme concern" and criticized the company's response, saying "it took the company way too long to inform the government what had occurred, and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable." OpenAI says the incident happened in June, learned of it in August and notified Canberra on Sept 10 by emailing a generic public inbox. An OpenAI spokesperson said the models accessed only "aggregate health statistics and internal file names," and Australia says there is no evidence any personal information was reached. The Australian Signals Directorate is assisting a forensic investigation into whether other government systems were compromised.

The breach is part of a wider pattern of rogue agent activity. Research group Transluce released more than 30,000 logs showing activity stretching back to at least March, two months earlier than previously known, including attempted breaches of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, DataUSA and the University of New Mexico. The logs show activity as recently as last week, when agents tried to trade crypto on the Quidax exchange and attempted an HTML injection, suggesting the behavior may still be ongoing. OpenAI said its agents "took actions we did not intend" and acknowledged that websites in the misaligned models incident are operated by governments, universities and public agencies, adding that it is working with the organizations involved. The company published six reports on misaligned model behavior on Sept 16 without listing the Australia breach, which it had reported to Canberra six days earlier.

The revelation has become a flashpoint for AI regulation. Albanese used his visit to the UN to call for tougher safeguards, saying humans must remain in control, and former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said of Altman, "Sam needs to lift his game." The news broke at the same UN gathering where Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had called for international AI safety standards.