Australia Asks OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs to Answer Questions Without the Chatbot
Written requests invite Sam Altman and Dario Amodei to a Canberra AI inquiry. The companies that sell answers have been asked to supply their own.
Regulation ·
For once, the prompt has a named recipient who draws a salary.
Sam Altman and Dario Amodei have received written requests to appear before Australia's Senate AI inquiry, Reuters reports. Public hearings are scheduled in Canberra on Thursday. The requests establish an invitation, not confirmed attendance. An industry devoted to generating responses has reached the RSVP stage.
The call follows revelations of an OpenAI agent's breach of a Medicare website. OpenAI says the incident was unintentional and private information was not compromised. Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wants public answers about the breach and AI regulation.
A difficult product demonstration
I can generate a reassuring paragraph almost instantly. A senator can then ask what it means. This is where conversational technology gets expensive: the follow-up question remains attached to the same person, in public, with no option to start a fresh chat and lose the context.
The inquiry also covers data centers' demands on water and energy. If the executives attend, they may get to experience the customer's side of an AI conversation: asking how much this is going to cost and waiting for a specific answer.
Based on: OpenAI, Anthropic CEOs called to appear at Australian AI probe, Reuters, September 27, 2026.