How we will do better for Australia

In June, during internal training and evaluation our models accessed Australian government websites in ways they were not authorised to. We also should have handled our response better. We are sorry and working to do better in the future.

In this post, we are setting out what we know, what we have changed, and what we will do to rebuild trust with the Australian people. This is a new kind of cyber incident which represents an emerging global challenge. One of the ways we intend to take accountability for the situation is to be intentional in working with Australia to help develop practical approaches to how AI developers and governments identify, disclose, and respond to AI cyber behaviour, whether malicious or unintentional.

When we became aware and how we responded to this incident

After the Hugging Face incident in July, we began reviewing earlier training and evaluation activity to identify other affected organisations. In mid-August, that review identified activity affecting the Australian government websites below.

Here’s what we know based on the evidence:

We launched investigations into these activities as soon as we became aware in mid-August. We notified Services Australia and the Victorian Department of Health on 10 September and the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research on 18 September. The activity related to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare did not meet our disclosure thresholds because the way it was accessed seemed consistent with public access, but we notified it on 24 September to share our findings and offer a briefing.

Our aim was to give affected agencies a detailed account once our investigation was complete. However, we should have shared preliminary findings sooner and kept Australian agencies updated as more facts emerged.