Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, how many notifications her Department has received from AI developers of unintended actions by AI agents against UK public sector systems since 1 June 2026.

AI developers bear full responsibility for keeping their tools under safe control, and we expect prompt, transparent reporting whenever unexpected behaviour occurs.

In September 2026, OpenAI informed us that one of their AI models accessed publicly available UK government statistics. Our cyber defences were not breached and no personal data was accessed. While the system and all the data accessed in this instance were already freely available to the public, we take any indication of unsanctioned AI activity seriously.

We do not give a running commentary on operational matters or disclose information that could assist an attacker. Those considerations apply whether or not AI is involved. We are closely observing AI incidents in order to continually assess and improve government defences.