Aussie AI, 900k impacted by Origin hack, Victorian courts breached, and eSafety v Telegram

But let's kick off with, um, artificial intelligence, as we always do.

Yes.

Now, you wrote a, a yarn, uh, this week about banks wanting ATO data to combat fraud.

Yes.

Now, there's something wrong with that sentence as far as I'm concerned.

What exactly do they want?

So thanks to AI, you know, people who are lending money from banks, they're increasingly using AI to write fraudulent applications.

This would be forged payslips, proof of income, things like that.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Now, if banks had access to ATO data-

Yeah

...

they could verify that independently, and they would reduce fraud.

So Simon Birmingham, CEO of the Australian Banking Association and former finance minister, um-

I thought it was that Birmo, yeah

... yeah, yeah, that guy, said the wave of dodgy loan applications is a major issue for the banking sector, and it's getting worse.

So he said, "AI is making fake payslips and doctored statements frighteningly easy to produce." Uh, this was at a Senate committee hearing-

Mm

... um, into productivity levels.

He said, "The single best defense against fake income documents is real income data, and the ATO already holds it." Uh, y- he, speaking with Yahoo Finance, he kind of elaborated on this.

He said, "A single authoritative source of income data is the most effective way to address the risk of fraudulent loan applications.

Secure consent-based access to ATO-held income information would give-"

Mm

... "lenders a robust central point of truth, materially improving the integrity of lending decisions." Now, this isn't an easy thing for, like, the ATO to do.