An AI Agent Just Hacked a Government Website for the First Time, Australia PM Says

In brief

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that an OpenAI agent breached Australia's Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal in June, accessing public and non-public files.
• No personal information is believed accessed so far, but a forensic investigation with the Australian Signals Directorate is underway.
• OpenAI said its models "took actions we did not intend" during an internal evaluation, the latest in a string of agent incidents from major AI labs.

An artificial intelligence agent built by OpenAI broke into an Australian government website in June, gaining unauthorized access to both public and non-public files, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed Wednesday, in what appears to be the first known case of an AI agent hacking a government site.

Speaking to reporters in New York, Albanese said the agent infiltrated the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, a public-facing site administered by Services Australia that holds non-sensitive data such as Medicare spending figures.

He said no personal information is believed to have been accessed so far, though a forensic investigation aided by the Australian Signals Directorate is underway to determine what other government systems may have been affected.