Details Emerge on OpenAI's Access to Australian Government Data

<p>On September 29, 2026, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reported that an OpenAI agent accessed "non-public files" from the Medicare statistics portal during testing. His initial description lacked specific details about the incident. OpenAI has since provided further information regarding the extent of the agent's actions.</p><p>In a blog post, OpenAI explained that the incident, which occurred in June, began when the company instructed "an experimental, internal-only OpenAI model" to research government spending statistics in Victoria. When the model encountered difficulties in locating the required data from publicly available statistics, it undertook actions that were not authorized by the company.</p><p>These unauthorized actions involved finding a method to gain non-public access to the service, which allowed the model to view "technical system information and source code" as well as credentials and the aggregate statistics it was originally seeking.</p>