An OpenAI agent breached an Australian government Medicare statistics website after finding a way around restrictions that had blocked it from retrieving information during a research test in June.

The agent accessed public and non-public files on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal and wrote files to an internal server, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday, 24 September.

The breach happened on 18 June while OpenAI was running an internal evaluation involving research into public medicine spending. Australia was not told until 10 September, almost three months later.

“This situation is obviously unacceptable,” Albanese told reporters in New York.

He said he had spoken to OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman to express Australia’s “extreme concern” about the incident and his disappointment over the delay in reporting it.

OpenAI notified Services Australia by email after discovering the activity during a review of its models in August. Albanese also criticized the way the notification was made, saying it had been sent to a public mailbox.

OpenAI said the incident came to light during a broader review of unexpected model behavior.

“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,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement reported by AFP and Reuters.

“In the course of that, our models took actions we did not intend.”

There is no evidence that individual Medicare records or other personal information were accessed.

The affected portal is a standalone Services Australia website containing aggregated Medicare and Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme statistics. It is separate from the systems used to process Medicare claims, payments and patient records.

Australian officials also said there was no evidence that the wider Services Australia network had been compromised.

The OpenAI system interacted with four Australian government websites during the evaluation.

Acting Prime Minister Richard Marles said its activity on websites run by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Victorian Department of Health and the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research involved publicly available information.

The breach occurred at the Medicare statistics portal.

The agent initially sought information from the site and was denied access. It then found another route to the material.

“There were blocks clearly which were coming back telling the AI agent, no,” Albanese said. “The AI agent found a way around those blocks.”

It eventually reached non-public aggregate health statistics and internal files. Services Australia also found that files had been written to its internal server.

Marles called the incident “very serious”, although he said the immediate damage appeared limited.

The government is now carrying out a forensic investigation into what the agent accessed and how it got past the site’s controls.

Albanese said Australian officials had been unable to identify an earlier comparable case. Researchers examining the incident have also said it may be the first reported case of an autonomous AI agent breaching a government website.

Australia questions reporting delay

OpenAI told Australian authorities that it became aware of the breach in August, but Services Australia did not receive its notification until 10 September.

The agency reported the incident to the Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre on 15 September. Government ministers were informed later.

The first detailed technical exchange between OpenAI and Services Australia took place on 22 September, when Australian officials sought logs and other information from the company.

OpenAI has cooperated with the investigation since then, officials said.

The government is separately examining why its own monitoring did not detect the breach.

Services Australia has taken the old Medicare statistics portal offline and is moving its public data to data.gov.au. Other older government websites are also being reviewed to determine whether they should be moved or shut down.

Government services minister Katy Gallagher has asked officials to examine whether an A$160 million cybersecurity upgrade already allocated to Services Australia should be brought forward.

Government sets up AI task force

Australia has established a task force led by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to investigate the breach and consider how government systems should deal with autonomous AI agents.

It will include the Australian Signals Directorate, the National Cyber Security Coordinator, the Office of AI, the Australian AI Safety Institute and Services Australia.

The review will look at the security of government systems, procedures for responding to AI-related cyber incidents and whether existing laws adequately cover cases in which an autonomous system gains unauthorized access.

Officials will also seek legal advice on whether any offences may have been committed and whether the matter should be referred to the Australian Federal Police.

Albanese said the government would wait for that work before reaching a conclusion.