# OpenAI accessed non-public Medicare health statistics in June

Canonical source: https://clip.cameronwilson.com.au/s/RzxVJ1OYJMjhXrUsZ7LWOw
Publication: CamClip
Published: 2026-09-24T02:07:48+00:00
Content role: appearance

Archive updated: 2026-09-30T22:42:13+00:00

## Transcript

Raw or automatically generated transcript. Check the linked recording before using verbatim quotations.

Let's bring in our AI reporter Cam Wilson now, who's with me in the studio. Good to see you, Cam. So, what do we know about exactly what happened here? Yeah, so we heard this morning from the Prime Minister that uh OpenAI uh had told them that in June they were conducting some internal evaluations of their models, so putting their AI through its its paces to see what it could do. And as a result of that, as a result of the tasks that they gave it, that AI model accessed a number of government websites, I think you said four, um, as part of some kind of uh medical health related kind of question or challenge that it was trying to do, including accessing some information on uh Medicare aggregated health statistics that was not meant to be public. That happened in June. Um, as people who've been involved in the news might know, there's been a kind of number of things that happened in June to OpenAI, including a very um well-known now um OpenAI Hugging Face attack, which was this bigger incident that many people have heard about. Um, as a result of that kind of big event, OpenAI has been reviewing what exactly were our AI models doing during this time. Uh, and then they say as a consequence of that, in August that they discovered that its models had access to this non-public um health statistic data. And then in September, after doing some validation, you know, double checking all these things and making sure they understood what it was, they told um Services Australia, and then in the two weeks since this kind of filtered up until this morning when we heard about it from the Prime Minister. Okay, so what's OpenAI had to say about this? So OpenAI confirmed that it's happened. They said that they um they kind of gave us the timeline of what happened, and they have stressed that this is you know not specific individual health information. This is and this is uh uh corroborates what the government has said. This has come this top level aggregate data, and they said that they saw some internal file names. So they are very much saying that you know, while it did do something that kind of went beyond kind of what was intended to be public-facing information, what was seen was not a big deal, and they said that they have kind of doing this investigation now and we'll have more to say about it soon. Okay, so you've been looking at public logs detailing AI agents' activities. What have you found? Yeah, so I mean, this is a part of this, like, you know, we had this big incident that happened that we learned about it now a couple of months ago, and OpenAI decided to, you know, open its books and look at what these models have been up to. Um, one of the things that we actually found out about early this month, not from the company but from a bunch of researchers who spoke to Reuters was that um their AI agents, uh unbeknownst to OpenAI had found a German coding forum that they used to kind of talk to each other and coordinate their tasks. I they call it like a scratch pad. Looking at that, I've been able to find out um some of the kind of things that they were doing. This was at the same time as what the government has disclosed. It has not been confirmed that it is exactly the same incidents, but in these kind of chats between the AI agents, they are talking about accessing Australian health data, including one of the websites that was mentioned by the Prime Minister as accessed by OpenAI, not the one that was um done in a way that was um considered hacking. But when I looked at the kind of methods that they were doing, some of them went a little bit beyond just um you know trying to access it like anyone would, but we were intending to circumvent some very basic anti AI agent, anti-bot cybersecurity methods. So we can see that they were trying to get around kind of the walls that uh AI that you know the government was putting up to protect its stuff online. Just a question without notice, Cam. When the operators of AI are setting these challenges and tasks, can't they say, do not do this, do not breach these non-public websites? It is like that is like one of the big you know questions that kind of come out of this because you know, fundamentally what a lot of um you know AI does now for people is you might say, you know, the the example they always say is like plan me a holiday. To do so, they've got to do all these subtasks, you know, figure out where you want to go, check flights, all those kinds of things. It's that delegation of those subtasks. When you said plan me a holiday, you didn't say go check, you know, flight tracker or whatever that they have to do. And this big challenge in AI at the moment is how do we make it so that when we give uh you know AI one overall goal that we make sure that all of its sub goals, you know, all the things that's doing to uh to achieve that are on the level, are what they say is aligned, doing things that we want doing things in a way that we would expect it to act without making explicit. So the they the the like long answer is that this is a big thing at the moment, it's a big kind of um controversial area in the field, um, and it is something that is obviously very much an open question. But they they do say we are making efforts to try and act in ethical ways, um, but obviously it's short it falls short at time. Finally, acting uh PM Richard Miles uh used a fence versus fortress uh analogy today to describe the data protections the government is using. So, how protected is Australian government data from these types of breaches? So I think this is a really important part of this. The information that was accessed is not particularly sensitive. It was not intended to be public, but I think the Deputy Prime Minister later said it has since been made public since this incident. So there was no like we that what has been accessed is not something that is, you know, um a top national secret. And correspondingly, it was not very well secured in terms of cybersecurity. So when the Deputy Prime Minister gives this you know metaphor of a fence, it's the difference between you know looking over a fence and seeing something in someone's front yard and maybe stepping over a little fence versus like a tall fence with like guard dogs and fort knocks behind it. Um it was not particularly well secured. However, the reason that you know that we are paying so much attention to this is that this is just a new threat, a new kind of challenge that everyone from government institutions to even individuals have to consider because AI is making it not only easier uh to hack, is not only getting more powerful, but it just because it's accessibility means that more people have access to it. So, you know, it's gone from being like if someone wanted to hack you, you know, they'd have to put in effort, they'd have to have the expertise. Increasingly now anyone can do that, or they the AI agents trying to do a bigger task might do it on their own. Thanks, Cam. Thank you.