OpenAI ‘sorry, working to do better’ after hack of Australian websites

OpenAI has apologised to Australians for its attack on Medicare, and has agreed to attend the upcoming Greens-led Senate inquiry in Canberra on the incident.

In a lengthy blog post released on Tuesday, OpenAI said:

“We also should have handled our response better. We are sorry and working to do better in the future.

"In this post, we are setting out what we know, what we have changed, and what we will do to rebuild trust with the Australian people. 

"This is a new kind of cyber incident which represents an emerging global challenge. 

“One of the ways we intend to take accountability for the situation is to be intentional in working with Australia to help develop practical approaches to how AI developers and governments identify, disclose, and respond to AI cyber behaviour, whether malicious or unintentional.”

The company also provided more detail on the incident revealed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week, revealing it became aware of agent activity on Australian government websites in mid-August.

The agents hacked a Services Australia portal for Medicare statistics, and was able to run commands, retrieve internal files, credentials, and write files.

OpenAI has also admitted that The NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research’s public crime mapping tool was accessed, with application configuration, operational jobs and logs, and website metadata provided to the agency.

OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs called to appear at Senate inquiry

On Monday, Mediaweek reported that OpenAI’s Sam Altman and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei have been sent written requests to appear at the Greens-led Ai inquiry, which begins public hearings in Canberra on Thursday.

Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Greens party will chair the probe.

The Senate inquiry will also examine the potential impacts of AI and data centers on Australian communities, industries, water and energy.

Hanson-Young said Altman needed to be publicly accountable to the Australian public.

“This can’t all be done behind closed doors,” Hanson-Young said. “The public has a right to know what went on here.”