The White House is asking OpenAI to slow roll the release of its new model over safety concerns
The Trump administration has asked OpenAI to limit the release of its newest model, GPT 5.6, to a select group of partners rather than the general public, citing safety and security concerns. CEO Sam Altman told staff that the government would be approving access customer by customer during a preview period, with a broader release potentially following weeks later. This mirrors what Anthropic is already doing voluntarily with its frontier cyber model Claude Mythos, which is restricted to a small set of partners via Project Glasswing. The administration, which initially favored a hands-off approach to AI, recently signed an executive order directing AI companies to voluntarily submit new models for government testing before public release. The underlying concern is that powerful frontier AI models capable of identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities at machine speed could be weaponized by cybercriminals.