(June 27): OpenAI is rolling out a preview version of a more capable new artificial intelligence (AI) model to select partners before making it available more widely in the coming weeks, following pressure from the Trump administration to stagger the release.
The ChatGPT maker said on Friday that it’s introducing the GPT-5.6 model series to a small group of trusted partners whose names have been approved by the US government. The limited release came at the Trump administration’s request, OpenAI said.
“We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI said in a blog post. “It keeps the best tools from users, developers, enterprises, cyber defenders, and global partners who need them. We are taking this short-term step because we believe it is the strongest path to broader availability in the coming weeks.”
The model will initially be made available to 20 partners, Bloomberg News previously reported, and a path to access it will be via Amazon.com Inc’s Bedrock software platform.
The government’s involvement in the roll-out adds to growing pressure from the White House on AI developers. OpenAI rival Anthropic PBC suspended its most capable models two weeks ago after the government ordered the company to restrict foreign nationals inside and outside the US from using the models, citing national security concerns.
Anthropic previously said it believes the US government issued the order after discovering that it’s possible to “jail-break” — bypass the guardrails of — Fable 5, a recently released version of Mythos that the company blocked from carrying out cybersecurity tasks.
See also: US lifts export restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5 AI model
The most powerful of the three versions of GPT-5.6, called Sol, is meant to be particularly adept at carrying out coding, biology and cybersecurity tasks on its own, the company said.
OpenAI said it “strengthened protections for higher-risk activity” for its most cutting-edge model, including around “sensitive cyber requests”. But OpenAI also hinted at the challenge of safeguarding against every conceivable risk ahead of a model’s release.
In a post on social media platform X on Friday, OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman characterised the US government’s roll-out request as “bad news”, though he wrote that he thinks it is “quite reasonable” to release models first in a limited preview to certain users.
See also: Companies roll out AI agents faster than they can redesign jobs: reports
“But this isn’t quite the process that we think is optimal,” he said.
OpenAI hopes that an executive order signed earlier this month by US President Donald Trump may help clarify the process of releasing AI models in the future. The directive gave 60 days from the signing for the Trump administration and AI companies to come up with a voluntary framework that, among other things, provides the government access to so-called “frontier” models for up to 30 days before they are planned to be released.
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