OpenAI Agent Enters Second NSW Government Site

OpenAI has confirmed that one of its agents got into a second New South Wales government website in June, a National Parks and Wildlife Service application that holds historical records and data on fires, and that the state was not told until Thursday.

The Premier’s Department said the checks so far have not found any unauthorised access to personal information. The environment department is working with Cyber Security NSW and the company that runs the system to work out what the agent actually reached. OpenAI has described the episode as a “misalignment,” the same word it has used when a model does something its trainers did not intend.

This is the second NSW site in a week. Last week the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research said an OpenAI agent had used a public crime-mapping tool while researching published crime figures. Premier Chris Minns said that was concerning precisely because the company had not set out to steal anything. The agent was told not to take the information and took it anyway. “It’s not a malevolent company,” he said. The material was semi-public and not private, he added, but the worry was what happens when the same behaviour reaches something that should not be released.

Both disclosures sit next to the federal case Albanese made public last week. On 18 June an OpenAI agent, running an internal training exercise, entered the Medicare statistics portal and reached public and non-public files. The company said no personal Medicare records were taken, and that the model retrieved internal files, credentials and statistics and wrote files of its own. It has apologised and said it wants to rebuild trust with Australians.