{"id":924853,"date":"2026-10-08T04:24:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T04:24:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924853\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T04:24:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T04:24:13","slug":"openai-used-ai-to-help-write-email-warning-australian-government-ai-had-hacked-its-websites-openai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/924853\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI used AI to help write email warning Australian government AI had hacked its websites | OpenAI"},"content":{"rendered":"

OpenAI used AI to help write the email to the Australian government advising that its AI agent had hacked into key departmental websites, Guardian Australia can reveal.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, one of the company\u2019s executives told a parliamentary inquiry that he didn\u2019t believe<\/a> that its own technology had been used to create the email, but said the company needed to confirm this.<\/p>\n

Guardian Australia understands AI was used by OpenAI\u2019s legal and security teams to generate parts of the wording of the email<\/a>, including word selection and formatting of the message. But a source with knowledge of the incident said humans reviewed the final email, and humans were responsible for actually sending the communication to the Services Australia inbox.<\/p>\n

OpenAI was contacted for comment.<\/p>\n

An artificial intelligence agent developed by OpenAI accessed Services Australia data and three other <\/a>systems in June. The company notified Australia on 10 September despite becoming aware of the incident in August.<\/p>\n

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The company\u2019s first notification to Australia came in a five-paragraph email to a Services Australia inbox, publicdisclosures@servicesaustralia.gov.au, which was only checked once per day.<\/p>\n

OpenAI has come under fire for not raising the issue in a more formal or direct way, including during a face-to-face meeting between the company\u2019s CEO, Sam Altman, and Australia\u2019s deputy prime minister, Richard Marles, on 1 September, nine days before the company emailed Services Australia but nearly a month after it first learned of the 18 June intrusion.<\/p>\n

Jason Kwon, OpenAI\u2019s chief strategy officer, admitted in a parliamentary hearing on Tuesday that the company\u2019s \u201cresponse was not good enough, and we should have informed the impacted parties much sooner\u201d.<\/p>\n

During the hearing, Liberal MP Aaron Violi \u2013 the shadow minister for technology \u2013 had asked Kwon specifically about the email and whether AI had been involved in its creation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate that, to get the data and have a review, you\u2019ve got to use AI agents, and obviously your business uses AI. When you notified Services Australia via email, did your staff use AI to construct that email?\u201d Violi asked.<\/p>\n

Kwon responded: \u201cI don\u2019t believe so, but we\u2019re happy to go and confirm.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kwon indicated during the hearing that OpenAI would provide specific responses to more technical queries in answers to questions on notice.OpenAI is expected to provide more information about the email once its own investigation has concluded.<\/p>\n

The email, obtained by Guardian Australia in September, advised Services Australia: \u201cWe are notifying you of a security vulnerability identified during our review of OpenAI model activity involving Services Australia\u2019s Medicare Statistics service at medicarestatistics.humanservices.gov.au.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn OpenAI model identified a way to make the server carry out instructions sent through the public reporting interface, without a private account or password. It was able to access this to read portions of internal program files and settings, obtain a list of files, and create and read back a small test file on the server.\u201d<\/p>\n

The email advised that OpenAI\u2019s review \u201cfound no evidence that the model accessed patient-level records, personal information or credentials; deleted data; or established ongoing access\u201d, and sent information about the \u201caffected URL\u201d and \u201caffected report\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe recommend that the team responsible for the service investigate the vulnerability and assess the changes needed to prevent it. We would be glad to brief your security team and provide supporting evidence as available.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cBest, OpenAI Security Team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Charlton, the assistant minister for science and technology, spoke about the OpenAI incident in a speech in Sydney on Thursday, describing the company\u2019s agent as having \u201chacked into an Australian government system\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a starting point, no company should release a frontier AI model that is not safe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYet the fact that has occurred, and the fact that the labs did not detect or prevent it, prompts important questions about the role of new regulation in the National AI Standards.\u201d<\/p>\n

Charlton said frontier AI \u201cpushes the limits\u201d of existing government conventions and protocols around assessing safety risks, and went beyond \u201cconventional\u201d approaches.<\/p>\n

The assistant minister said \u201cthe market will not fix\u201d issues with AI development, a contrast to the United States\u2019 approach of letting companies operate with a degree of self-regulation. Charlton raised concerns that \u201cfrontier labs are putting capability ahead of safety\u201d, positing that Australia can have the most impact on the development of AI by hosting and influencing frontier labs.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI needs regulating because its harms are severe, hard to undo, borne by people who never chose them, and sometimes invisible until they arrive,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe market will not fix this alone, because the incentives reward speed and capability, and even the people at the top of the industry cannot slow down by themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do you know more? Email josh.butler@theguardian.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI used AI to help write the email to the Australian government advising that its AI agent had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":924854,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,61],"class_list":["post-924853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=924853"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/924853\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/924854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=924853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=924853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=924853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}