News live: Marles says ‘legal situation’ of OpenAI breach under investigation; Victoria to allow dogs in pubs under election promise

Key events

Marles ‘grateful’ to OpenAI for engaging with government after Medicare hack

Richard Marles, the acting prime minister, is speaking in Sydney about the OpenAI hack. He said the department of prime minister and cabinet will institute a taskforce to look at the incident and examine Australia’s posture with respect to cyber threats.

“It will look at the security of government networks, it will look at the legal arrangements that we have in place in respect of an incident of this kind,” Marles said.

I want to say and acknowledge that OpenAI have been working with us very cooperatively here. They have clearly notified us of this and engagement with them has been critical to understanding what has occurred. We are grateful for that. That said, what has occurred here is obviously completely unacceptable.

All of this, I think, we can take as a warning in relation to the development of AI itself. It is so important that this technology, which represents such an enormous opportunity for humanity, is nevertheless being developed in a way where the guardrails, the safeguards, are well ahead of the capability itself.

Anika Wells, the federal communications minister, just spoke in Brisbane. She was asked about OpenAI, and had this to say:

We want big tech to take accountability. We want an unregulated industry to implement some basic safety standards here on Australian shores, and that’s what I’ll be trying to do when I introduce the digital duty of care in October.

Wells said an investigation into the matter is ongoing, confirming the Australian Signals Directorate is still looking into whether there had been any criminal breaches here, and if so, if there should be repercussions.

Greens call for US ambassador to be grilled over OpenAI Medicare hack

The Greens have called the OpenAI incident “a serious attack on Australia’s sovereign interests”.

The acting Greens leader, Mehreen Faruqi, has called for the new US ambassador, David Brat, to be called in by the government over the incident revealed this morning.

“This breach by a foreign AI company on an Australian government database is deeply alarming and brings home the risks that these out of control tech corporations pose. The fact that the government did not even know it happened is disturbing,” she said.

These billion dollar corporations will not take taskforce investigations or statements seriously. They will respond to strength. Now is the time for the Prime Minister to fight for Australia’s interests and implement a moratorium on data centres in Australia until we have regulations protecting people and the country.

If hacking Medicare and taking two months to alert the government doesn’t push Labor to treat AI with the seriousness it deserves, what will?

Pocock says OpenAI hack ‘very concerning but ultimately unsurprising’

Independent senator David Pocock put out a statement this morning, saying the breach highlights “how slow the Australian Government has been to implement appropriate safeguards for AI in high risk settings”. He went on:

This begs the question about why the Albanese Government shelved plans for a AI Safety Act and why they are so slow to develop legislation to implement new standards.

We have these companies warning of existential threat and hacking critical government infrastructure and the Labor government’s response is “We’ll get to that next year”.

Pocock said there remained a “big question” as well about why “we aren’t holding these big tech companies liable for this kind of data breach”.

If it was an Australian who hacked the system they’d likely be heading for jail, yet there’s no accountability for AI companies developing this technology.

Groceries rise by 7% across Coles, Woolworths, IGA and Aldi, Choice finds

Groceries have become more expensive at all four of Australia’s major supermarket chains, with the average price of a basket of essentials increasing by 7% between March and June, new analysis has found.

The consumer advocacy group Choice on Thursday released its 10th quarterly government-funded survey of supermarket prices, which it assessed by filling a basket with eight common grocery items at 104 different stores in June.

The basket – containing milk, royal gala apples, strawberries, bananas, potatoes, avocado, basmati rice and beef mince – increased in price by 7% across Coles, Woolworths, Aldi, and IGA since Choice’s last survey in March.

Read more here:

Angus Taylor says Labor needs to do more explaining after OpenAI breach

The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, said the OpenAI breach amounted to a “serous warning” about online security in the age of artificial intelligence.

Taylor spoke to 4BC this morning, criticising the Albanese government for not doing enough to protect system security in the age of AI. He said:

A lot of our personal information is on those systems. So the government needs to explain when it first became aware of the breach, exactly what information was accessed, what vulnerability was exploited, and how they’re closing it …

This is a government and a set of ministers who are more obsessed in talking about their own power, looking in the mirror as we see in the papers over the last couple of days talking about how powerful they are, rather than getting on with focusing on the issues that matter to Australians. Keeping Australians safe is right at the top of the list.

Victorian premier says he spoke to Albanese overnight about OpenAI breach

Ben Carroll says the prime minister informed him of the OpenAI hack of Medicare overnight. Asked whether any Victorian health records were compromised, he says:

[We are] working through this matter, and information is coming to hand literally as we speak. I’ll have more to say on this later … What he [the prime minister] has been able to assure me, though, his initial advice is there has been no compromise of personal private information, but we are stressing this is early days in the investigation

Letting dogs in pubs means ‘moving with the times’, Victorian premier says

The Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, held a press conference at the London Tavern in Richmond this morning to announce his election commitment to allow dogs in pubs, and allow venues to stay open until 3am.

He says:

We’re going to move with the times. All over Europe, pubs have been pet friendly for years – decades, in fact. And as we’ve just seen, when you come to a pub that’s pet friendly, everyone benefits. So we are now going to allow our pubs to allow pets such as dogs.

The final decision will be the pub, but we want our pubs to be family friendly, where everyone can come enjoy the company. And we also know what’s been shown in Europe is that pubs that are pet friendly and allow dogs benefit everyone. The economy grows; they become more family friendly, and everyone has a great time.

OpenAI notified government about Medicare breach via ‘email sent to public mailbox’

Albanese had some more to say about the OpenAI breach this morning …

The prime minister told reporters this morning a bit more about the OpenAI breach, saying the notification from the company was sent to a public mailbox when it ultimately came through:

It was that it took until 10 September before there was any notification at all [from OpenAI]. And the notification was an email sent to just the public mailbox.

As I’ve said, part of the investigation will be whether there are any issues that need to be referred to the Australian Federal Police.

He said the government is aware of three other systems that may have been impacted, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research and the Victorian Department of Health.

A timeline of the OpenAI breach of Medicare data

An OpenAI models accessed private Medicare data in June, but the company said it did not become aware of the activity until August during an ongoing review of the model’s activity.

Services Australia was notified weeks later, on 10 September, after OpenAI says it spent the intervening time investigating how and what was accessed.

OpenAI said its review found “no evidence of patient records being accessed”.

“The information accessed included aggregate health statistics and internal file names,” the company said. “Our overall review is ongoing, and we remain committed to transparency about these issues and to sharing what we learn as that work continues.”

Victoria to allow dogs in pubs – if Labor wins the state election

Dogs would be allowed inside pubs across Victoria if Labor wins the state election in November, the Carroll government has announced.

Labor vowed to amend the Food Act 1984 to overturn the ban on dogs in venues and said consultation would following regarding front bars, dining rooms, and whether food could be served.

Publicans decide the music, the menu and the crowd. They should get to decide whether dogs are allowed inside.

Victorian Labor said it would also allow pubs to open until 3am under an additional election promise.

Noting an “an onerous process to trade past 1am” the government said it would legislate the “automatic right” to stay open until 3am.

Marles says Australia will investigate ‘legal situation’ around OpenAI Medicare breach

Richard Marles, the acting prime minister, said the government is “working through” if the OpenAI breach would amount to an offence and result in a penalty.

He told RN earlier:

We will look at what is the legal situation in respect of this and what it means to have gained an unauthorised access, albeit in an unintended way.

So that is one of the questions that we’re continuing to investigate through the taskforce.

OpenAI Medicare breach ‘is a warning’, Marles says

Marles said the information accessed was at the “lower end of sensitivity” and the website with the data had relatively low levels of security when compared with anything to do with national security.

We keep our most important national security information behind a fortress. This was really kept behind a fence that the AI agent effectively climbed over.

But he said the incident reflected the urgent need to learn “all the lessons we can” and secure the country’s information.

I mean, this is a warning about the fact that artificial intelligence, which is a technology that has huge opportunity to benefit humanity, has to be developed with enormous care. There have to be guardrails and safety measures in place which are way ahead of the capability which is being developed.

We do need to have guardrails in place. We do need to be developing this technology with extreme care. And I think that’s the point that we should take from this incident.

Marles says government only learned of OpenAI breach when company told officials

Richard Marles, the acting prime minister and minister for defence, said the government only learned of the breach when OpenAI raised it with officials.

Marles said:

We’ve just taken the last few days to assure ourselves as best as we can as the prime minister’s just indicated that the impact … is relatively minor, inasmuch as no personal information has been accessed here. The system itself hasn’t been compromised.

That said, this is a really serious incident.

Marles went on to say that an AI model was given a “benign task” of researching health and medical statistics and approached four Australian medical websites. Three were only used as a member of the public might, but the agent effectively hacked into the fourth related to Medicare to obtain the information it was seeking.

The information is benign in a sense … the impact is relatively minor, but the incident is very serious.

We’ve seen an artificial intelligence agent, in an unintended way, access an Australian government website in a way which is unauthorised, and that is obviously deeply unacceptable.