{"id":905616,"date":"2026-09-26T01:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905616\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T01:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T01:14:12","slug":"how-does-australia-hold-a-rogue-ai-agent-responsible-for-a-government-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/905616\/","title":{"rendered":"How does Australia hold a rogue AI agent responsible for a government hack?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian <\/a>government is considering if there may be legal consequences for OpenAI after a rogue agent hacked one of its websites.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese<\/a> is seeking urgent advice on whether any laws were broken when a \u201cmisaligned\u201d OpenAI model in training breached the Services Australia-run Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal in June.<\/p>\n

\"Sam<\/p>\n

Sam Altman, co-founder and chief executive of OpenAI.\u00a0AP<\/p>\n

The company became aware of the breach months later, in August, and failed to notify the Australian government until September 10 via a public email address. <\/p>\n

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles described the breach of the website, which holds public information, as the agent climbing a fence.<\/p>\n

Whereas, he said individual and government information sit behind a safe and national security information sit behind a fortress. <\/p>\n

The breach is still being treated very seriously by the government but has raised questions on whether OpenAI can actually be held responsible.<\/p>\n

If a person had accessed the portal, they could be charged for unauthorised access to, or modification of, restricted data under the criminal code and face up to two years\u2019 imprisonment. <\/p>\n

Their company could also be liable if it was done as part of their employment.<\/p>\n

Assistant Technology Minister Andrew Charlton conceded the laws for this type of incident would not apply to an artificial intelligence<\/a> agent. <\/p>\n

\u201cAn AI agent is not a legal person,\u201d he told the ABC. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn this situation where the breach was conducted by an AI agent, the liability has to be traced back to the intent of a person or a company that created or directed the agent. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo, these are important legal questions and that\u2019s why we\u2019re taking advice on them in order to either make a referral or make changes to the law that may be required.\u201d <\/p>\n

ANU economist and public policy specialist Dominic Meagher said that legal action against a rogue agent would hinge on the ability to prove the company\u2019s intent and any negligence. <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is considering legal action.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s potentially a range of laws that were broken, but one thing here is that there was no intent,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, I think the question is going to come down to, did they do enough to prevent the risk of things going wrong? And what counts as enough?\u201d<\/p>\n

For example, he said, a factory that spills chemicals into a river is obliged to report that as soon as it becomes aware of the incident. <\/p>\n

But before it becomes aware of the incident, it is obliged to have long processes in place to make sure it does not happen in the first place.<\/p>\n

Meagher said allowing the big tech companies to build data centres in Australia would help gain some accountability. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat certainly gives us more of a seat at the table,\u201d he said on enforcing domestic guardrails on the US-based companies. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re not here, then we can just complain all we want, and no one\u2019s going to care.\u201d<\/p>\n

The incident has reignited calls across the political aisle for domestic laws against AI so that companies are held to the same criminal standard over their agents. <\/p>\n

Greens Senator David Shoebridge, who supported former Labor industry minister Ed Husic on safety measures around AI following consultations that began in 2023, said laws were now urgent. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf a person hacked into a security government database they would be looking at a prison sentence. That should be the same case for these companies,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe government absolutely has the ability to hold OpenAI and other companies to account when they act in this way, they are choosing not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independent MP Monique Ryan the country is exposed and immediate action is needed to protect data and privacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf an Australian hacked Medicare, you\u2019d hope they\u2019d face jail,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cUntil we get our act together, international\u00a0AI companies face no accountability at all.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian government is considering if there may be legal consequences for OpenAI after a rogue agent hacked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-905616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}