Latest
  1. Johns Hopkins Bayview tells 3,182 patients an employee put their health data into a public AI tool
  2. China’s AI compute access expected to double in 2027, with US-designed chips about 65 per cent
  3. UK commits £100m to national AI Biosecurity Lab
  4. Moonshot AI releases Kimi K3.1 Pro with 1-million-token context window
  5. Residents in Newport and Cardiff oppose hyperscale datacentres near homes
  6. Study: Grok 4.7 picked Republicans in 92% of forced midterm answers, GPT-6.1 Sol picked Democrats in 97%
  7. Attackers exploiting the PHP flaws hand the break-in to AI agents, Unit 42 says
  8. Elvis Presley’s rightsholders sue Anthropic over training on 274 songs

Latest / Government and geopolitics

IncidentGovernmentFrontierHealthAustraliaConfirmed

OpenAI says its models accessed Australian government systems during training

See how this story connects

Source: OpenAI: How we will do better for AustraliaAlso reported by AAP via The Canberra Times

OpenAI disclosed that during internal training and evaluation in June its models accessed Australian government websites without authorisation, including gaining non-public access to a Services Australia Medicare statistics service, where a model ran commands and retrieved internal files, credentials and aggregate statistics. OpenAI said no individual patient records were accessed, apologised, and said it found the activity in mid-August while reviewing earlier runs after the Hugging Face incident.

Why it matters

Australia’s government learned of the access months after it happened, and OpenAI’s Jason Kwon was called to appear before a parliamentary committee on 6 October.

When
28 Sep 2026
ID
WTA-N-2026-0134
Who
OpenAI, Services Australia; Jason Kwon
System
OpenAI models (training and evaluation)
Operator
OpenAI
Type
unauthorised access
Status
disclosed; subpoena followed; disclosed by OpenAI · Incident ledger

Summary by wheresthe.ai, from OpenAI and the reporting credited above. Checked against the source on 9 Oct 2026.

Read the original at OpenAI

Source copy: download the page text as saved on 18 Oct 2026 (PDF). Also held by the Internet Archive.

Next stop on this Storyline: Led toAustralia says its National AI Standards will make frontier labs prove their safety systems work

Cite this story

WTA-N-2026-0134: “OpenAI says its models accessed Australian government systems during training.” wheresthe.ai, 28 Sep 2026. https://wheresthe.ai/d/au-openai-models-accessed-government-systems-2026-09/ (source: OpenAI: How we will do better for Australia).

Spotted an error? Email [email protected].