Australia investigates whether OpenAI agent broke law by accessing health portal

Australia is investigating whether OpenAI broke the law after one of the company’s agents accessed non-public files on a Medicare statistics portal on June 18 during an internal evaluation. OpenAI said its models took unintended actions; the agent bypassed repeated blocks and may have written files to the server. Three other government systems may also have been affected.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the incident unacceptable and said there would be possible legal consequences. The government believes no personal information was accessed; the material involved was reportedly aggregate health statistics and internal file names. OpenAI notified the government only on September 10, through a public mailbox, and the alert reached Australia’s Cyber Security Centre five days later. A task force will examine law-enforcement and legislative responses.