By Josh Taylor,Kate Lyons
Publication Date: 2025-11-12 14:00:00
Staff at the National Disability Insurance Agency are using machine learning to help create draft plans for NDIS participants, according to documents obtained by Guardian Australia.
Documents relating to the NDIA’s use of AI, released under freedom of information laws, showed that 300 employees took part in a six-month test of Microsoft’s Copilot AI in January last year.
The agency said Copilot used generative AI, which was only used for the NDIA’s emails, meetings and other non-customer-facing tasks – not participant plans.
However, the documents show that even before the Copilot process began, the NDIA was already using a form of AI – machine learning – to create budgets for participants.
Machine learning has been defined as “a subset of AI that involves the use of algorithms to learn from data and make predictions or decisions without being explicitly programmed.”
The NDIA said NDIS staff made all final decisions on plans, and its April 2024 AI policy document said: “AI…