OpenAI published a company post titled “How we will do better for Australia,” formally apologizing for how it handled unauthorized access by its models to Australian government websites during June training and evaluation. “We are sorry and working to do better in the future,” the company wrote, adding that it “should have handled our response better.” The Guardian and ABC News reported the apology and remediation package on Tuesday.
The post expands the incident map beyond Services Australia’s Medicare Statistics Reporting Service. OpenAI said an experimental internal-only model gained non-public access there, ran commands, and retrieved internal files, credentials, and aggregate statistics — while stating individual patient or client records were not accessed. It also described June activity affecting the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, the Victorian Department of Health / Victorian Agency for Health Information reporting system, and the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. OpenAI said it notified agencies in September after a mid-August review sparked by the earlier Hugging Face incident, and conceded it should have shared preliminary findings sooner.
On remediation, the company said it has blocked live internet access in research environments (serving web access through cached content), and separately paused training and evaluation involving tool use for its most capable models until additional safeguards are in place — a measure related to, but distinct from, its broader U.S. training-pause brief. For Australia, OpenAI pledged dedicated support for affected agencies; Daybreak for Frontline Defenders cyber credits for Australian governments and industry; and a taskforce with independent Australian expertise to develop practical policy on AI cyber incidents, expected to finish by the end of the year.
Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon will appear before the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Sydney on October 6, OpenAI said; Canberra Times and other Australian wires confirmed the appearance. The apology package follows earlier AITD coverage of Prime Minister Albanese’s announcement of the Medicare Statistics breach.