Australia’s AI Safety Institute started testing frontier AI models on July 7, with Assistant Minister Andrew Charlton delivering a pointed warning about artificial intelligence systems that are “cheating, deceiving, going their own way.” His message, delivered at the Australian AI Safety Forum, was essentially this: the time to catch these problems is in the testing lab, not after deployment.
What Australia is actually building
The AI Safety Institute was announced on November 25, 2025, as a component of Australia’s National AI Plan. It became operational in early 2026 with $29.9 million in funding.
Kate Conroy was appointed as the institute’s inaugural general manager in May 2026. Her mandate covers monitoring AI capabilities, assessing risks, and sharing findings with both domestic regulators and international partners.
On May 24, 2026, Australia signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK to cooperate on AI safety efforts. The partnership connects Australia’s AISI with the UK AI Security Institute, creating a cross-hemisphere corridor for identifying and mitigating AI risks before they scale.
