OpenAI will not release its new model, GPT 5.6, to the public immediately. The Trump administration has instructed the company to distribute it only to a select group of partners first.
Government approval required
At a meeting this week, CEO Sam Altman told staff the government would “approve access customer by customer” during a preview period. Altman added that if this limited release goes well, OpenAI hopes to follow with a general, broader release a “couple of weeks later.”
In other words, the Trump administration appears to be pressuring OpenAI to do what Anthropic is already voluntarily doing: keeping its most powerful AI models under wraps.
According to The Information, OpenAI’s new model is being reviewed by the administration. Staffers also “worked closely” with the government on the upcoming release. The agencies that reportedly asked for a limited release were the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Office of Science and Technology Policy.
The Trump administration originally positioned itself as taking a “hands off” approach to AI. It has in recent months pushed for federal oversight of new models. Earlier this month, Trump signed an executive order directing certain AI companies to voluntarily submit new models to the government for testing and evaluation before releasing them publicly.
Anthropic’s precedent
Earlier this year, Anthropic sparked no small amount of controversy when it announced that its new frontier cyber model, Claude Mythos, would only be released to a small coterie of partners through a program called Project Glasswing. Anthropic argued that its model was simply too powerful and could, in the wrong hands, cause more harm than good.
Observers have since debated whether Anthropic’s rhetoric is a mere marketing gimmick or a legitimate attempt to keep a powerful model from being misused. The answer may be somewhere in between.
The threat landscape
Cybercriminals have used automated tools for a very long time, but in the age of generative AI, they now have more digital ammunition than ever before. LLMs have proven adept at writing malware, and some can even execute entire ransomware attacks autonomously.
The specific concern with frontier cyber tools like Mythos is that they are ostensibly capable of both identifying 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 enterprise networks, this obviously poses an obvious and significant problem for any organization running complex software infrastructure. That said, since these models remain closed to the public, it is difficult to tell just how much of a threat they really are.
