Australia has asked the chief executives of OpenAI and Anthropic to appear before a Senate inquiry, following revelations that an OpenAI agent accessed the country’s Medicare portal.
A spokesperson for Senator Sarah Hanson-Young of the Australian Greens said written requests have been sent to OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei to attend public hearings in Canberra on Thursday. The spokesperson said the calls were linked to a security incident involving Australia’s Medicare system, reported in June.
The Senate inquiry is examining the potential impacts of artificial intelligence and data centre operations on public safety, data transparency, communities, industries, water and energy, the spokesperson said. The hearings form part of several state and federal inquiries into AI policy and regulation in Australia.
The spokesperson urged the executives to explain the incident, saying, “There are serious questions for Sam Altman to answer about the OpenAI hack of Australian government websites.” The statement added that Altman and Amodei “must front up, face the Senate’s questions and have an honest conversation about what effective, lasting regulation of this industry should look like.”
Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, condemned what the government has described as a Medicare incursion. Addressing reporters in New York, Albanese said the agent, developed by OpenAI, accessed public and nonpublic data on the government’s Medicare portal in June.
OpenAI has said it was still investigating the matter but that “there was no evidence patient records were accessed” and that the company only learned of the breach in August. The company’s review identified activity involving several Australian government websites and services as its “models attempted to look up answers,” according to the statement.
OpenAI and Anthropic did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside business hours, the spokesperson added.
The summons to the CEOs adds to growing pressure on international AI developers as governments consider new rules. Australia’s Labor government has been tightening digital regulation, including new online safety laws and proposed digital duty of care frameworks.
The inquiry hearings in Canberra will be public, the senator’s office said, and are expected to probe both the technical causes of the Medicare incident and broader questions about how AI systems interact with external networks and public-sector data.
Featured image: FoxTPNL via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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