Anthropic open to Australian laws requiring AI hack reporting

Anthropic, the company behind the AI chatbot Claude, is prepared to comply with Australian laws that would require AI companies to report data breaches, according to executives who appeared before an Australian parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday. This stance comes in the wake of a rival, OpenAI, disclosing a breach of Australia's main health portal. Both companies are seeking approval for large data centers planned in Sydney and regional Queensland.

The Australian government has been preparing AI-specific laws set to take effect next year. In September, the government criticized OpenAI for notifying it of a breach of the Medicare portal, which occurred three months prior. Anthropic's Head of Safeguards, David Orr, stated that a thorough investigation following an OpenAI agent's hack of Hugging Face found no breaches of Australian government systems.

Orr noted that Anthropic had limited visibility into potential breaches by its customers, as enterprise clients typically had strict data deletion policies. The responsibility for reporting breaches was largely determined by the company's internal policy, Orr added.

David Masters, Anthropic's head of policy for Australia and New Zealand, expressed openness to Australian laws requiring AI companies to disclose data breaches. However, Australian content creators have pushed back against AI companies' efforts to relax copyright laws. Currently, these companies must negotiate licensing deals with local content creators before using their material for model training.

Kate Gilchrist, head of content and legal operations for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, argued that the existing copyright system is sufficient to manage AI businesses, but the proposed opt-out clause for AI companies would place the burden on content creators to ensure compliance, which she deemed impractical. Nationwide inquiries into AI regulation are ongoing, with OpenAI representatives set to testify at the same parliamentary inquiry.