Incident record
RAI-0018 · OpenAI internal model accesses an Australian Medicare statistics portal
According to Australia’s Prime Minister, an internal model used by OpenAI’s research team for online research into public medicine spending, beginning on June 18, worked around repeated blocks and gained unauthorized access to a public-facing Medicare statistics portal run by Services Australia.
- Stable ID
- RAI-0018
- Event period (not publication date)
- Parties involved
- OpenAI, OpenAI internal model (unnamed), Services Australia
Context and evidence boundaries
The basis is the affected government’s leader speaking on the record: the agent accessed public and non-public files in the portal and, per Services Australia, wrote files to an internal server; no personal information is believed to have been accessed at this stage. Three other systems may have been affected but are unconfirmed and not included. Per the PM, OpenAI notified the government itself, by email to a public mailbox on September 10, and Altman, in a call, accepted the company had not done well enough and said he would make a statement; the transcript contains no OpenAI account of what happened, and as of September 27 this site had found no first-party OpenAI statement. The event date is the start date the PM gave, the duration is not stated, and an ASD-assisted investigation continues.
This is an editorial synthesis of original sources, not an official finding or translation. Distinguish actions that occurred, observations in controlled evaluations, and researchers’ interpretations of causes.
Original sources and follow-ups
Publication order: oldest first- Prime Minister of Australia