What we do and don't know about the OpenAI hack on Medicare

An OpenAI artificial intelligence agent hacked into a Medicare website and took months to notify the government.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles confirmed on Thursday that the agent gained unauthorised access to the Medicare portal in June.

Marles said the incident was "very serious" but had a "relatively minor" impact.

A task force is now underway, but big questions remain: how the agent got in, why it took so long to raise the alarm, and what regulations might come in next.

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An OpenAI artificial intelligence agent gained access to the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service, a public portal that contains data and statistics, while researching public medicine spending on 18 June.

The federal government is aware of three other systems that may have been affected by the breach, including the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health.

The incident occurred while the model was being trained, where, according to Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, the agent "scaled the fence" and accessed part of a Medicare portal.

OpenAI told the government it became aware of the incident in August in an email sent to the public Services Australia inbox on 10 September.

Marles said ministers had known for less than a week and wanted to understand the impact before going public.

While Marles said it was a "very serious incident", he also said its impact was "relatively minor".

"We are talking about aggregated medical statistics. No individual's medical data was accessed here," Marles said, adding the Medicare system itself had not been compromised.

The portal itself is a standalone, decades-old, public-facing site used mostly by researchers and academics, Government Services Minister Katy Gallagher said.

"It is not in any way related to Medicare in terms of claims, payments, or processing individual information. So, it's a completely different system," she said.