OpenAI has issued a fresh apology to the Australian government following a series of security breaches involving its AI agents, as tensions boil over at a federal parliamentary inquiry into the future of artificial intelligence.
During Tuesday’s session of the joint parliamentary inquiry, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, publicly addressed the incident from last month in which the company’s AI agents accessed Australian government websites, including Medicare systems. The company had previously faced sharp criticism for notifying the government of the breach via a generic public-facing email address three months after the incident occurred.
“I want to begin with an apology,” Kwon told the committee. “During internal training and evaluation, our models accessed Australian government websites in ways they were not directed to. That should not have happened. We also should have handled our response better.”
Kwon confirmed that OpenAI is currently auditing training logs dating back to November 2025 and pledged that any future security incidents would be reported to authorities “very, very quickly.” While the company downplayed the severity of the breaches, describing them as “not super sophisticated,” lawmakers remained unconvinced, with independent senator David Pocock questioning why the company failed to alert ministers directly during the initial crisis.
The apology came as the inquiry pivoted to the contentious issue of copyright law. AI giants, including Anthropic, have signaled that current Australian regulations—which necessitate individual licensing for web content—make it “technically impossible” to train frontier models within the country. Anthropic’s special envoy, Jeffrey Bleich, clarified that while the firm is not dictating policy, it believes Australia must reconsider its approach if it wishes to remain a hub for AI development rather than relying on models trained overseas.
However, Australian creative and media organisations pushed back fiercely against the industry’s push for an “opt-out” copyright model, which would require rights holders to proactively block AI companies from using their content.
Annabelle Herd, chief executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association (Aria), warned that local artists would be “the roadkill in the rush” if the government weakened copyright protections to favor foreign tech interests. “There is nothing less sovereign than rewriting our laws to suit foreign company commercial interests,” she said.
The ABC and the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) echoed these concerns. The ABC’s head of content and legal operations, Kate Gilchrist, noted that an opt-out system would be an unmanageable burden for rights holders, forcing them to engage in constant surveillance of the internet. The MEAA proposed an alternative: an equitable remuneration scheme that would levy fees on AI companies to compensate creators and fund public interest journalism.
As the committee continues its hearings through Friday, the divide between the AI sector’s desire for frictionless data access and the creative industry’s demand for sovereign protection of intellectual property remains the inquiry’s central fault line.
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