OpenAI to reiterate apology to Australia over Medicare hack as inquiry told artists risk becoming ‘roadkill’

Company executive to acknowledge ‘more work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people’ as ABC says copyright laws do not need changing

OpenAI will use an appearance before a parliamentary committee to apologise again to Australia about the hack on Medicare last month, on the same day media and entertainment organisations argue weakening Australian copyright law for AI model training would leave artists as “roadkill”.

“I want to begin with an apology. 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,” chief strategy officer, Jason Kwon, will tell the committee on Tuesday afternoon.

Kwon will say he will answer questions about what happened and what changes are being made, while also arguing that AI can improve lives.

Following the revelation of another hack – on the NSW national parks and wildlife service last week – Kwon will tell the committee that more parties will be notified “promptly and directly” should more incidents be discovered in OpenAI’s ongoing review.

Annabelle Herd, chief executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association (Aria) told the committee that “Australia’s artists will be the roadkill in the rush” to make deals with AI companies, and Aria was not against AI frontier model training being done in Australia but it should be done on “our terms”.

“There is nothing less sovereign than rewriting our laws to suit foreign company commercial interests, done the way that big AI is proposing,” she said. “It will devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah for rights holders globally.

The ABC told the committee Australia’s existing copyright regime is “completely adequate”.

ABC’s head of content and legal operations, Kate Gilchrist, said an opt-out system as proposed by AI companies places burdens and costs on rights holders, as it would require ongoing surveillance to see whether copyright material is being used.

“We cannot scour the internet and ensure we are opting out on all of those different sites of publication. It simply does not work,” she said.

The union representing the entertainment and news sector, the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called for an equitable remuneration scheme that would put fees on companies across the AI technology stack.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft are expected to give evidence on Tuesday afternoon.