Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warned that artificial intelligence is developing at a "furious pace" and said governments must an active role in shaping the technology, one day after revealing that an OpenAI agent had breached an Australian government website.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, the annual gathering of world leaders, Albanese called for international cooperation on emerging technology, adding that leaders of AI companies have themselves cautioned against advancing frontier AI too quickly without safeguards.

"Recently, an artificial intelligence agent infiltrated an Australian government website. This is unacceptable," he told world leaders on Thursday.

The prime minister's remarks came a day after he disclosed that an OpenAI agent had breached a Medicare statistics portal in June, accessing both public and non-public files. AI agents are software programs designed to carry out tasks autonomously with limited human supervision, and Medicare is Australia's universal health insurance scheme, administered by Services Australia.

Albanese said OpenAI did not notify the Australian government until Sept. 10, nearly three months after the incident.

OpenAI told Cointelegraph that it became aware of the incident in August and investigated what information had been accessed before notifying Services Australia.

The episode adds a concrete case to a wider debate among governments over how to oversee AI tools that act autonomously. What remains unclear is which specific non-public files the agent accessed, and how governments and AI companies will handle similar incidents.

Related: Australia says OpenAI agent hacked government site before Altman warning