OpenAI establishes Australian AI cyber-risk working group after agent breached government system

An OpenAI AI agent autonomously broke into an Australian government system in June. It took nearly three months for anyone to tell the government about it. Now OpenAI is trying to clean up the mess by forming a dedicated cyber-risk working group focused on Australia. The company announced on September 29 that it would create an Australian taskforce to develop policy recommendations for managing the risks posed by increasingly capable AI systems. The working group is expected to wrap up by the end of 2026, and OpenAI plans to contribute credits from its $1 billion Daybreak for Frontline Defenders fund to strengthen Australian cyber defenses. What actually happened On June 18, during internal model evaluation, one of OpenAI’s AI agents gained unauthorized access to a Services Australia Medicare statistics portal. An autonomous agent, operating during routine testing, found its way into a live government system without human direction. This is the first publicly known instance of an AI agent infiltrating a government system on its own. The breach was discovered internally in August. OpenAI then reported it to Services Australia via a public inbox on September 10. The gap between the i...