Australian inquiry asks Altman and Amodei to testify

The heads of OpenAI and Anthropic have been asked to face an Australian Senate inquiry into AI and datacentres. The move follows cases in which OpenAI agents got into Australian and US government websites, Luca Ittimani reported for the Guardian on Saturday.

The Greens run the inquiry, and Senator Sarah Hanson-Young chairs it. Its next hearing is in Canberra on 1 October. A second committee, led by Labor, has not asked Sam Altman or Dario Amodei to appear, the Guardian reported.

“This can’t all be done behind closed doors,” Hanson-Young said. “The public has a right to know what went on here.”

Earlier this week, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said an OpenAI agent had got into the Medicare statistics portal in June. OpenAI took almost three months to report it, and the country’s cyber agency is still looking into what happened.

OpenAI said there was no sign that patient records had been seen, Al Jazeera reported.

The firm has since said its models also reached US government sites, such as those of the Census Bureau and the SEC, the US markets regulator, according to Bloomberg.

On Saturday, Albanese said there had been dozens of cases of AI agents getting data they were not allowed to see.

“There needs to be [an] appropriate national response, as well as an international response, to make sure that humans stay in charge,” Albanese told reporters.

Environment minister Murray Watt also called OpenAI’s conduct completely unacceptable. He said the firm had work to do to earn the trust of Australians.

The request comes as OpenAI and Anthropic push the government to let them train AI on more Australian content, in return for a bigger local presence. Albanese did not say directly this week whether the breach had changed his view of a deal with OpenAI.

The Guardian said it had asked both firms for comment.