US grows anxious over AI, orders Sam Altman to delay GPT 5.6 rollout: Report
OpenAI has reportedly delayed the rollout of its upcoming GPT 5.6 AI model after the US government asked the company to first make it available
OpenAI has reportedly delayed the rollout of its upcoming GPT 5.6 AI model after the US government asked the company to first make it available to a limited group of trusted partners. According to a Bloomberg report, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees during an internal meeting that the Trump administration had requested a staggered launch for the GPT 5.6 model. The OpenAI chief reportedly told his staff that the US government has grown more anxious about the capabilities of advanced AI models. The latest news comes just weeks after the Trump administration ordered Anthropic to shut down access to its top-of-the-line Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models for foreign nationals inside and outside the US.
How will GPT 5.6 be launched? The report says OpenAI will initially provide access to around 20 trusted partners, with Amazon Bedrock expected to serve as one of the primary platforms for accessing the model. The OpenAI chief reportedly told his staff that they need to work with the Trump administration on any input that officials may have regarding the safety and restrictions of OpenAI's upcoming models, even if the company disagrees. Reportedly, OpenAI employees are also concerned about whether the government's actions against Anthropic could affect the company's ability to launch future AI models on schedule. Anthropic had earlier said it believed the government acted after researchers demonstrated a jailbreak that allowed Fable 5 to bypass some safety guardrails for cybersecurity-related tasks.
“We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people. If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers,” Anthropic said in a blog post. The report notes that AI companies currently do not have a standardised process for informing US authorities about the launch of their upcoming frontier models. Companies also reportedly remain uncertain about who in the government should be briefed, what technical information should be shared, and how far in advance officials should be notified before a launch. However, the uncertainty could be eased in a few months, with President Donald Trump signing an executive order earlier this month directing the administration and AI companies to develop a voluntary framework for frontier AI models within 60 days.
The proposed framework would allow the US government to review certain advanced AI models for up to 30 days before their planned public release, creating a more structured approval process for future launches. Trump administration to decide partners According to The Information, OpenAI will initially release GPT 5.6 as a limited preview for a small group of enterprise customers. During this period, the Trump administration is reportedly expected to approve customer access on a case-by-case basis.
The BriefWire