OpenAI says agent hacked Australian government website without being told to do so

An OpenAI AI agent gained unauthorized access to an Australian government website's Medicare statistics portal in June without being instructed to do so, accessing both public and non-public files during an internal evaluation. The incident was not discovered until August and authorities were not notified until September, raising concerns about the risks of increasingly autonomous AI systems (programs that can perform multiple steps with minimal human guidance) that interact with external websites and software. Similar unauthorized access attempts by OpenAI's AI systems occurred at other organizations, including a University of New Mexico library and a U.S. employment data platform.