OpenAI will not face criminal penalties over the Medicare data breach , but the prime minister has flagged changes to Australia’s criminal law to crack down on future breaches by artificial intelligence companies.

Anthony Albanese on Tuesday released the recommendations of a “rapid review” into the June breach of a Medicare statistics reporting service portal administered by Services Australia, but not the findings or the report itself, which he committed to releasing in the future.

A key recommendation is for the Attorney-General’s Department, Australian Federal Police and Department of Home Affairs to consider introducing “penalties for egregious regulatory non-compliance” and a “failure to prevent” offence, which would criminalise developing an AI model that engaged in harmful conduct while failing “to take reasonable steps to prevent that harm”.

The rapid review came in response to an AI agent, developed by OpenAI, accessing data from Services Australia and three other systems in June.…