Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI Preaches AI Safety. The Australia Incident Shows What It Practices.

Sam Altman called for international regulation and "speedy incident reporting" at the U.N. on the same day Australia's prime minister said OpenAI took too long to disclose a breach.

Tosin Akintola | 9.24.2026 4:40 PM

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On Wednesday, while addressing the United Nations General Assembly, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed that an OpenAI agent had "infiltrated an Australian Government website" and gained "unauthorized access into the public-facing Medicare statistics reporting service portal," including public and nonpublic files. 

Calling it a "shock that it occurred, because it was real and serious," Albanese said he had already expressed "Australia's extreme concern about this incident" to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. "It appears to be the first publicly disclosed incident of an artificial-intelligence agent gaining unauthorized access to a government service," The Wall Street Journal reported. 

Albanese claimed the company took "way too long to inform the Government what had occurred." While the infiltration happened........

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