Australia to mandate AI companies to report breaches

Australia will require artificial intelligence companies to report breaches and consider changes to criminal law to address "serious misconduct", Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Tuesday, after an OpenAI agent broke into a government website.



The OpenAI agent gained unauthorised access to the medical statistics portal of Medicare, Australia's universal health insurance programme, while conducting research on public medical spending, the government said in September.



The breach triggered a rapid government review into the incident.



Albanese said his government had accepted all recommendations of the review.



"(The recommendations) include mandatory AI company reporting when it comes to misaligned behaviour or cyber incidents, and consideration of reforming criminal law in cases of serious misconduct," Albanese told reporters.



OpenAI has said it learned of the breach only in August and that the incident was unintentional.



The breach has added to friction between Australia and US technology companies, after Canberra refused ChatGPT maker OpenAI and rival Anthropic exemptions from copyright laws for model training, instead requiring them to negotiate licensing agreements with Australian rights holders.