Australia probes alleged unauthorized AI access to Medicare portal
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI gained unauthorized access on June 18 to a government portal containing statistics related to the country’s public Medicare health insurance system.
Speaking at a press conference in New York, Albanese provided details about the scope of the incident, saying the AI agent had accessed the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal operated by Services Australia, CE Report quotes Anadolu Agency.
According to the prime minister, the agent accessed both publicly available and non-public files. However, Albanese said current findings indicated that personal health information belonging to people covered by Medicare had not been compromised.
Albanese said he had spoken with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the incident and expressed his “extremely serious concerns.” He also said it took the company approximately three months to notify the Australian government about the security incident.
According to Albanese, OpenAI notified Services Australia of the June 18 incident in a message sent to the agency’s general email address on September 10. The prime minister described the way the notification was handled as “unacceptable.”
Albanese also warned that three government health-related websites may have been affected by the activities of the OpenAI agent. He announced the creation of a task force led by the Prime Minister’s Office to investigate the incidents.
OpenAI said in a statement that its investigation had found no evidence that patient records were accessed.
The incident is being considered the first known case in which an AI agent has been reported to have carried out a cyberattack against an Australian government website.
The case has renewed attention on the security risks associated with increasingly autonomous AI agents, particularly when they are capable of interacting with online systems and accessing digital resources.
Photo: Instagram/openai
