OpenAI to fund Australian cyber defences, form AI risk taskforce after government website breach

OpenAI has said it will help fund cyber defences in Australia and also set up a taskforce to help manage the risk of increasingly capable artificial intelligence, as the company continues to react its model breaching an Australian government website.

“We will support Australian governments and industry through credits from our $1 billion Daybreak for Frontline Defenders fund and technical assistance to strengthen cyber defences across critical infrastructure,” OpenAI said in a statement.

The taskforce will “develop practical policy recommendations for managing risks from increasingly capable AI agents,” focusing on better notification and coordination with the government, it said.

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed last week that an OpenAI model had hacked a government website, and since then the firm has said that its AI models also accessed publicly available information from US government websites, including those of the Census Bureau and the Securities and Exchange Commission.

OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon will travel from the US to Australia to answer questions at a parliamentary committee next week, a spokesperson said on Monday.