The release of OpenAI’s newest model, GPT 5.6, will reportedly not be like its previous versions. Instead of distributing it to the public, the company plans to share it only with a select group of close associates because the Trump administration told it: reports The Information.
In a meeting this week, CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the government would “approve customer-by-customer access” during a preview period. Altman reportedly added that if the limited release goes well, OpenAI hopes to follow up with a general, wider release “a few weeks later.”
In other words, the Trump administration appears to be pressuring OpenAI to do what Anthropic already does voluntarily: keep its most powerful AI models under wraps.
According to The Information, OpenAI’s new model is not only being reviewed by management, but its executives have also “worked closely” with the government on the upcoming launch. The agencies that reportedly requested a limited release were the Office of the National Director for Cyberspace and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The Trump administration — which initially positioned itself as “hands off” on artificial intelligence — has pushed in recent months for federal oversight of new models. Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order directing some artificial intelligence companies to voluntarily submit new models to the government for testing and evaluation before making them public.
Earlier this year, Anthropic sparked controversy when it announced that its new cyber frontier model, Claude Mythos, would only be released to a small group of partners through a program called Project Glasswing. Anthropic argued that his model was simply too powerful and could, in the wrong hands, cause more harm than good. Since then, observers have debated whether Anthropic’s rhetoric is a simple marketing ploy or a legitimate attempt to prevent misuse of a powerful model. The answer may be somewhere in the middle.
Cybercriminals have used automated tools to very long timebut in the age of genetic artificial intelligence, they now have more digital ammunition than ever before. LLMs have proven to be capable of malware registrationand some even can to run full ransomware attacks autonomously.
The specific concern with cyber frontier tools like Mythos is that they are seemingly capable of both detecting and exploiting software vulnerabilities at speeds that no human analyst could match. Since many software systems contain hidden bugs that act as entry points into corporate networks, this obviously poses an obvious and significant problem for any organization with a complex software infrastructure. That said, since these models remain closed to the public, it’s hard to say how much of a threat they really pose.
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