AdvertisementOpenAI will apologise to Australians for its AI models accessing government websites they were never directed to, and concede it “should have handled our response better”.Chief strategy officer Jason Kwon will tell the parliament’s Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence, sitting in Sydney on Tuesday, that the company is sorry and has “work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people”, according to opening remarks seen by this masthead.OpenAI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon is set to face a grilling from parliament after the highly publicised Medicare breach.Oscar ColmanKwon, who appears at 2pm, will say OpenAI has paused training on some frontier models while it strengthens its infrastructure, monitoring and approach to alignment. He will be joined by Adam Cohen, OpenAI’s head of economic policy, and Peter Anstee, its national security lead for the Asia-Pacific.He will commit resources to affected agencies through OpenAI’s $1 billion Daybreak cyber defence fund, and announce a local taskforce of independent Australian experts that will report by the end of the year.AdvertisementHis statement does not mention Medicare by name. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese revealed last month that an OpenAI agent accessed public and non-public files on the Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal in June. Rival Anthropic fronts the committee at 12.10pm.Earlier, the ABC told the hearing it has no plans to replace any of its on-screen newsreaders or journalists with artificial intelligence, and asked for help getting tech companies to pay for its content.Kate Gilchrist, head of legal for content at the ABC, said there is a “lot at stake” for media companies as artificial intelligence develops.Paul Jeffers“To be very clear, the guidance that we give to our editorial staff makes very, very clear that they are not to create replicas of people or their voices without very careful consideration,” said David Sutton, the ABC’s senior executive for policy and regulatory affairs.“I can envisage particular contexts in program-making where that might be necessary. But fundamentally there’s no plan to recreate our newsreaders or anything like that.” AdvertisementThe ABC’s head of legal for content, Kate Gilchrist, said there was a “lot at stake” for media companies. That includes making sure audiences understand what content is produced by the ABC, and that there is a “financial return” on content created with public money.The ABC has no control over how its content is being used by AI “to control the integrity, accuracy, impartiality of the content, and the independence of the ABC”, Gilchrist said.The executives pointed to the Epstein files as an example of how AI can help journalists, with the technology able to sift very large collections of documents and surface material for reporters to examine more closely, Sutton said.“Enormous troves of documents, and I think half the world turned around and threw AI engines at that [the Epstein files] much in the same way that I think they wish they could have done with the Panama Papers,” Sutton said.AdvertisementThe ABC has sought to negotiate arrangements with major tech companies to be paid for its content but those talks have had little success so far, Sutton said.“Some assistance in making that happen would be wonderful,” he said.More to comeThe Business Briefing newsletter delivers major stories, exclusive coverage and expert opinion. Sign up to get it every weekday morning.SaveYou have reached your maximum number of saved items.Remove items from your saved list to add more.ShareLicense this articleMore:AIABCOpenAIAnthropicMedia & marketingMedicareDavid Swan is the technology editor for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He was previously technology editor for The Australian newspaper.Connect via X or email.Calum Jaspan is a media writer for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him securely on Signal @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email.AdvertisementAdvertisement