OpenAI will publicly launch GPT-5.6, its most advanced AI model, on Thursday following a delay last month prompted by U.S. government requests over heightened national security concerns about the potential misuse of powerful AI technologies.
The United States and China are in a race to develop cutting-edge AI models the likes of which, experts have said, could dramatically accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks in sectors relying on complex, interconnected and often decades-old technology systems.
Washington has increased scrutiny of advanced AI model releases to identify potential threats on concerns the technology could be misused by the military or the intelligence establishment in China, Russia and other countries.
Chinese authorities have also held meetings with top tech firms about potentially restricting overseas access to China’s most advanced AI models, including those yet to be released.
OpenAI competitor Anthropic had abruptly disabled its most advanced AI models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, for all users after the U.S. government’s June 12 export control order over national security concerns. The curbs were lifted last week after Anthropic implemented certain safeguards.
Axios, which broke the news on the OpenAI launch, reported that the Trump administration had approved a broad launch of GPT-5.6 following additional testing and meetings between the company and government officials.
The White House and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not respond to a Reuters request for comment outside regular business hours.
OpenAI had limited GPT-5.6 access to a small group of vetted partners whose details were shared with the authorities.
The ChatGPT owner will launch its most capable GPT-5.6 Sol, along with the lower-cost Terra and Luna models, it said in an X post late on Tuesday.
OpenAI touted improved agentic capabilities in coding, biology and cybersecurity when it previewed the models in late June. At the time, OpenAI said GPT-5.6 Sol was competitive with Anthropic’s Mythos Preview on the ExploitBench cybersecurity benchmark.
Billionaire Elon Musk, whose SpaceXAI rivals Anthropic and OpenAI, said on Wednesday his company was also making its leading model Grok 4.5 available to the public.
NATIONAL SECURITY CONCERNS
U.S. President Donald Trump has signed an executive order establishing a voluntary framework under which AI developers could provide “covered frontier models” to the U.S. government for up to 30 days before releasing them to trusted partners.
While Washington has lifted export controls for Anthropic’s Fable model, Mythos, which is designed for cybersecurity professionals, is still only available to some “trusted” U.S. organizations.
In China, authorities are worried about the potential for Mythos to exploit software vulnerabilities and that the U.S. might deploy the model against Beijing’s interests.
Anthropic has warned it was “probably impossible” to make any AI model fully robust against jailbreaks.
(Reporting by Devika Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips, Mrigank Dhaniwala and Pooja Desai)
