OpenAI's chief strategy officer told an Australian parliamentary hearing the company should have handled a June breach of a government statistics site better.
OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon told an Australian parliamentary hearing in Sydney on Tuesday that the company's response to a June breach of government websites was not good enough. He said the incident should not have happened.
An OpenAI agent accessed a private statistics portal holding non-sensitive data from Medicare, Australia's public healthcare scheme. BBC reported cyber specialists described it as the first hack of its kind involving a rogue model. Australia was notified weeks later by an email to a generic inbox.
Kwon said OpenAI was sorry and had work to do to rebuild trust. Asked why ministers were not contacted directly, he said that in retrospect the company should have done so. He said more precautions had been added to training environments.
Anthropic, which also appeared, said it had not found Australian breaches in a recent investigation. The hearing is examining how AI systems are controlled when they can reach external websites.
No public report at the hearing said sensitive medical records were taken. Officials and the company have described the exposed material as non-sensitive statistics.