Australia to introduce mandatory reporting after OpenAI hack to combat artificial intelligence ‘going rogue’

OpenAI won’t face criminal penalties over the Medicare hack but the prime minister has flagged changes to Australia’s criminal law to crack down on future breaches by artificial intelligence companies.

Anthony Albanese on Tuesday released the recommendations of a “rapid review” into the June breach but not the findings or the report itself.

A key recommendation is for the attorney general’s department, the Australian federal police and home affairs to consider reforming the law to introduce “penalties for egregious regulatory non-compliance” and a “failure to prevent” offence which would criminalise developing an AI model that engaged in harmful conduct while failing “to take reasonable steps to prevent that harm”.

The review recommended the federal government “consider mandatory, time-bound AI safety reporting, including but not limited to misaligned behaviour or agentic cyber incidents”.

The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, told reporters “we need to make sure that our laws and our systems keep pace with the technology and also make sure that we’re able to use the technology to find vulnerabilities before others do”.

“The mandatory reporting, when artificial intelligence goes rogue, gives us a chance to be able to make sure that when this happens, the reporting occurs and occurs immediately,” Burke said in Canberra alongside the PM.