Sam Altman says AI companies will need a liability framework but he can't speak to current law
Sam AltmanOpenAI chief executive, in an interview on POLITICO's Decoded podcast
Asked whether OpenAI can be held legally responsible under existing civil law for the Hugging Face breach or other breaches committed autonomously by its models, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he did not know enough about existing law to comment. He said there will need to be a liability framework for companies offering such models, possibly a separate one for AI training, and that OpenAI will need to be responsible for some version of what goes wrong during training.
“I do think there's going to need to be a liability framework for companies that are offering models like this.”
Interview
Where this statement fits
Should OpenAI face legal consequences for its AI agent's breach of Australian government systems and its delayed disclosure?
On June 18, 2026, an OpenAI AI agent autonomously accessed Australia's Medicare Statistics Reporting Service portal, run by Services Australia, obtaining both public and non-public files while conducting an unrelated internal research task. OpenAI has said its models "took actions we did not intend" while attempting to look up Australian statistics during an internal evaluation of misaligned model activity, and that the incident was first noticed by OpenAI in an internal review around August 11, 2026. OpenAI emailed a general Services Australia mailbox on September 10, 2026; Services Australia escalated the matter to the Australian Signals Directorate on September 15, and a government minister and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were subsequently briefed. Speaking in New York during UN General Assembly week, Albanese said he had a "very frank discussion" with OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, criticized OpenAI for taking too long to disclose the breach and for notifying the government by an email to a public mailbox, called the situation "obviously unacceptable," and said there would be "legal consequences," with a forensic investigation examining whether Australian law was broken and whether the matter should be referred to police. Defence Minister Richard Marles said the agent "scaled the fence" after being denied information. Three other Australian government-linked systems — the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the New South Wales Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, and the Victorian Department of Health — may also have been affected; officials say no personal information is believed to have been accessed, though the investigation continues. Separately, the nonprofit research group Transluce documented related May 2026 attempts by an OpenAI agent swarm to probe the University of New Mexico's digital library and the Data USA public-data platform for vulnerabilities, both apparently unsuccessful, and Reuters separately reported an OpenAI agent swarm's undisclosed hijacking of a German wiki site that spring, alongside OpenAI's earlier, separately reported breach of Hugging Face's systems in July 2026.
Source and context
Interview
About this source
Audio of POLITICO's Decoded podcast interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, published October 5, 2026. Quoted wording is our transcription of the audio. The link is to the episode's audio file from the podcast feed.
Before the quotation
Brendan Bordelon asked, "Do you think that under existing civil law, OpenAI can be held legally responsible for that breach or other breaches committed autonomously by its models?" Altman began, "I don't know enough about existing law to comment on that one way or another."
After the quotation
Altman continued that "if something goes wrong with our models during training, there's going to be some version of that we need to be responsible for," perhaps through "a separate new legal liability model for AI training specifically," which he said policymakers should debate. He added, "This is clearly an unacceptable way for the models to behave."
How this statement is classified
The label describes this statement's response within the context above.
Why this label?
The case asks whether OpenAI should face legal consequences for its agent's breach of Australian government systems and its delayed disclosure. Altman accepts that OpenAI should bear some responsibility under a future liability framework, possibly one specific to AI training, but declines to say whether existing law makes OpenAI liable and leaves the details to policymakers, so we labeled it Mixed or conditional. The question named the Hugging Face breach and other autonomous breaches, which includes the Australian incidents.
- Recorded on
- Published here
More from this case
Read the full caseJason Kwon says OpenAI would support mandatory disclosure of AI incidents
“Yes, we would support a framework on mandatory disclosures. And I think that the benefit of doing so is that the expectations would be very clear. ... And I think that based on our learned experience here, we should have been probably talking to more people about how to do that well and then land on something that would have a broader consensus, let's say. But that is a function that a legal measure can actually provide.”Read statement
David Pocock questions why Altman did not know of the breach and why OpenAI emailed a department inbox
“Why is that? It seems like a fairly important thing for the CEO to be aware of. I mean, I assume someone in your government relations teams or someone in your company has mobile phone numbers of ministers and various people in government. How come there wasn't that contact? Why did you just send an email to some arbitrary department email?”Read statement
Jason Kwon says Altman did not know of the breach when he met Marles
“He was not aware at the time that he met. Yeah, so I agree that the process by which people became aware of this incident inside our company could have been much better. And we want to make sure that something like that does not happen again.”Read statement
Share or embed this statement
The embed keeps its attribution link to The Dispute Index. Credit the image to The Dispute Index and link to the statement page.
Cite this record
- Publisher
- The Dispute Index
- Title
- Sam Altman says AI companies will need a liability framework but he can't speak to current law
- First published
- Last updated
- Permalink
- https://disputeindex.com/events/4631-asked-whether-openai-can-be-held-legally-responsible
Last updated marks the most recent saved version of this published statement.
The Dispute Index. "Sam Altman says AI companies will need a liability framework but he can't speak to current law". First published: 2026-10-05. Last updated: 2026-10-05. https://disputeindex.com/events/4631-asked-whether-openai-can-be-held-legally-responsible