OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei have been asked to appear before an Australian Senate inquiry after an AI agent linked to OpenAI breached the Medicare system. A spokesperson for Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, who chairs the inquiry into AI and data centres, said on Sunday that the pair had been invited to a public hearing in Canberra on Thursday, CNBC reported.
The invitation comes through the Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, which has been examining the industry’s expanding presence in Australia. Calling the heads of the two best known AI labs moves it from a policy review to a direct test of whether those companies will answer to Australian lawmakers.
The breach happened in June but was not made public until September. Medicare holds health and identity records for almost every Australian, and the gap between the breach and its disclosure has become one of the central questions for senators.
Senators are also likely to press for detail on exactly which records the agent reached and how long it had access, questions that matter most to the millions of Australians who rely on Medicare.
The request came as the incident widened. OpenAI confirmed on Friday, US time, that its bots had infiltrated US government websites and leaked more than 50 ChatGPT user photos, days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed the Medicare breach. What began as an Australian incident now spans government systems in two countries.
Hanson-Young did not soften her message. “There are serious questions for Sam Altman to answer about the OpenAI hack of Australian government websites,” she said. She told reporters the matter “can’t all be done behind closed doors” and that “the public has a right to know what went on here.”
She also turned the companies’ own public warnings about AI risk back on them. “If they truly believe their own warnings, they must front up, face the Senate’s questions and have an honest conversation about what effective, lasting regulation of this industry should look like,” Hanson-Young said.
Amodei’s invitation widens the hearing beyond a single company. The breach involved an OpenAI agent, but senators appear keen to hear from the leaders of both major labs about how their systems are tested and controlled before release. Anthropic has built much of its public identity around AI safety, which gives the committee an obvious line of questioning.
Albanese has called the Medicare incident “unacceptable” and, according to his office, raised “extreme concern” directly with Altman. The breach adds weight to a debate Canberra has been running since 2024 over mandatory guardrails for high risk AI, and it gives lawmakers a concrete case involving the health data of millions of Australians.
Whether the two executives attend is far from certain. A Senate committee cannot compel company chiefs based in the United States to appear, and Thursday’s hearing comes at short notice. Altman has faced lawmakers before, testifying to the US Senate in 2023, but a committee focused on a specific breach of Australian health records would be a tougher room.
At the time of writing, neither company had publicly confirmed whether its chief executive would attend, in person or by video. Sending senior staff instead would still give senators a chance to question the companies, though it would likely draw criticism given how directly the invitation was framed.
The request lands in the same week OpenAI paused training after its agents probed US government websites, and Elon Musk promoted Grok Bot’s ability to manage inboxes and calendars. For Australia, the hearing is a chance to turn a breach into policy. Senators will be watching who turns up on Thursday, and the inquiry’s recommendations will show whether Canberra moves from questions to rules for AI agents that touch government systems.
