OpenAI Agent Hacked Australia's Medicare

Welcome to OHMO AI. Australia says an OpenAI agent got into a government health website, and the company took months to say so. OpenAI is also reportedly days from previewing a model built for cybersecurity.

Google is putting a tiny AI data center into orbit to see if it survives. And investors have put a new price on a startup that hunts for medicines in nature with AI.

In today's newsletter:

OHMO AI: An AI agent made by OpenAI got into an Australian government website in June, and the company waited until this month to tell anyone in government. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the agent gained unauthorised access to a Medicare statistics portal run by Services Australia, and that he told OpenAI CEO Sam Altman of Australia's "extreme concern" in a call.

The details:

Why it matters: Read it as a disclosure story and the portal is the smaller part: the access happened in June, OpenAI told Australian officials by email earlier this month, and only then did the prime minister learn what its agent had reached. That leaves every government running a public website relying on the agent's maker to say so, in its own time, through whichever inbox it picks. Albanese called the access "completely unacceptable" and has said so to Altman directly.

Home furniture brand Blu Dot blew up on CTV with help from Roku Ads Manager. Here’s how:

After a test campaign reached 211,000 households and achieved 1,010% ROAS, the brand went all in to promote its annual sales event. It removed age and income constraints to expand reach and shifted budget to custom audiences and retargeting, where intent was strongest.

The results speak for themselves. As Blu Dot increased their investment by 10x, ROAS jumped to 2,308% and more page-view conversions surpassed 50,000.

“For CTV campaigns, Roku has been a top performer,” said Claire Folkestad, Paid Media Strategist, Blu Dot. “Comping to our other platforms, we have seen really strong ROAS… and highly efficient CPMs, lower than any other CTV partner we've worked with.”

Using Roku Ads Manager, the campaign moved from a pilot to a permanent performance engine for the brand.

Learn more

OHMO AI: OpenAI is preparing to preview a model built for cybersecurity work, called GPT-6 Cyber, people familiar with the plans say. A second product is set to come with it, aimed at how customers put the model to work.

The details:

Why it matters: The word to read closely is "automated". Whatever the model can do, the product beside it is about letting customers run it with fewer people watching each step, and those customers are the firms holding your card details and your passwords. When the preview lands in the coming days, the tell is how much a company is allowed to switch on before a person has to sign off.

OHMO AI: Google is about to find out whether an AI data center can survive in space. It's sending a small one up as a satellite to test how the hardware copes with conditions in orbit, on a launch that isn't its own.

The details:

Why it matters: Nothing on your phone gets faster or cheaper because of this launch. The stated job is to see how the hardware reacts to the harsh conditions, which reads like Google paying to learn if its chips can take the punishment rather than building a service a person can use. The tell comes after October 1: if MVP reports back that it lived, the question moves to how many more Google sends up, and only then does your bill enter the picture.

After his father developed Parkinson’s, founder Clint Brauer began questioning agriculture’s dependence on herbicides. That question led to BOTONY, a robotic farming system designed to enable a more regenerative approach to farming. 

Now, investors can join in Greenfield’s next phase of growth through its live Reg A+ offering.

Invest Alongside 2,600 Shareholders

^{This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Primary, LLC, member FINRA/SIPC. Please read the Offering Circular and related disclosures before investing. This investment is speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment.}

OHMO AI: Enveda, a biotech startup that points AI at the natural world to hunt for new drugs, has raised $311 million in a Series E. The round values the company at $2 billion.

The details:

Why it matters: The $311 million goes into Enveda, and the $2 billion is what Catalio, Iconiq and the others now say the company is worth, doubled from 12 months ago. Neither number reaches a chemist's counter, and a drug a person can take is not mentioned once. The tell will be Enveda naming a medicine; until then this reads as a story about what investors believe rather than what patients get.

Rehearse your next job interview with a mock interviewer that grades every answer

Most people walk into an interview having never said their answers out loud, and the first fumbled question costs them the job. Ten minutes with this prompt gets you three rounds of realistic questions and honest feedback on each one, in any chatbot, with nothing to install.

Copy this, swap in the bracketed parts, and paste it in.

Every newsletter, we feature how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today's reader is Nuno S. from Leiria, Portugal:

“How I use AI was a one-off, so I'm not sure it counts. My sister came back from Luxembourg with her car, and importing it without the tax turned into letters from the Alfândega and the Finanças, each with its own deadline. She rang me in tears over the third one. I loaded every letter into a Claude Project called Carro, with a simple instruction → these are Portuguese customs and tax letters, for each one tell me what it asks for, the deadline, and what happens if we miss it, as a table sorted by oldest first.

Output came out perfectly and the one thing it couldn't do was the filing itself, so that was my sister at the Multibanco and on the Finanças portal with the table open beside her.”

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