Australia said on Wednesday (September 23) an OpenAI agent breached a government health data portal in June, gaining unauthorized access to files, in what could be the first known instance of an AI agent hacking a government website.

The breach is one of the highest-profile incidents of AI agents accessing external systems outside the United States, coming on top of several recent breaches globally by rogue AIagents that have alarmed governments and companies.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the OpenAI agent gained unauthorized access to the medical statistics portal of a government agency responsible for non-sensitive health data and statistics, including public medical spending.

The incident comes after OpenAI and Anthropic, in separate submissions to a parliamentary inquiry this month, urged Australia to reconsider a ban on use of the country's creative content to train their models.

DESCRIPCIÓN DE IMÁGENES

NEW YORK, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES (SEPTEMBER 23, 2026) (AUSTRALIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION – Broadcast: No use Australia. Digital: No use Australia / .com.au internet sites / any internet site of any Australia based media organisations or mobile platforms / Australian NVO clients / smh.com.au / news.com.au)

1. AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE WALKING INTO NEWS CONFERENCE

2. ALBANESE SPEAKING TO MEDIA

3. (SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE SAYING:

"I want to update Australians on an incident in which an artificial intelligence agent has infiltrated an Australian Government website. This incident occurred in June of this year and involved an OpenAI agent gaining unauthorised access into the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal, which is administered by Services Australia."

4. ALBANESE SPEAKING TO MEDIA

5. (SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE SAYING:

"The AI agent accessed both public and non-public files. A forensic investigation aided by the Australian Signals Directorate is now underway to ascertain more information, including what other government systems were affected."

6. ALBANESE SPEAKING TO MEDIA

7. (SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE SAYING:

"The Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal is a public-facing statistics portal that contains non-sensitive Medicare information relating to data and statistics such as spending. No personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage, but investigations are ongoing. Evidence currently available is there is no broader compromise to the Services Australia network. Nonetheless, this situation is obviously unacceptable."

8. ALBANESE SPEAKING

9. (SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE SAYING:

"Today I spoke with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, to express Australia's extreme concern about this incident. And I also expressed my disappointment that it took the company way too long to inform the Government what had occurred and the nature of the way that that notification occurred as well was unacceptable."

10. ALBANESE SPEAKING

11. (SOUNDBITE) (English) AUSTRALIA'S PRIME MINISTER ANTHONY ALBANESE SAYING:

"That's why we want to be really clear with where it's at but we want to also be clear that the investigations are ongoing and this is not something that has precedence. So we are dealing with very complex issues."

12. ALBANESE SPEAKING AT NEWS CONFERENCE

INTERNET (SEPTEMBER 24, 2026) (SERVICES AUSTRALIA WEBSITE - Access all) (MUTE)

13. SCREEN RECORDING OF MEDICARE WEBPAGE ON SERVICES AUSTRALIA WEBSITE

14. SCREENSHOT OF MEDICARE LOGO ON WEBPAGE