OpenAI Restricts Access to Latest AI Models at US Government Request

OpenAI said Friday (June 26) that it is limiting the release of its new GPT-5.6 series artificial intelligence (AI) models to a small group of trusted partners at the request of the U.S. government.

The AI startup previewed the models’ capabilities as part of its ongoing engagement with the government, limited the release of the models at the government’s request, and shared with the government the identities of the trusted partners to which it released the models, it said in a Friday (June 26) blog post.

During the preview, OpenAI will continue testing and coordinating with the partners and will work toward releasing the models more broadly. The company plans to make the models generally available within weeks, according to the post.

“We don’t believe this kind of government access process should become the long-term default,” OpenAI said in the 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, while we work with the Administration to develop the cyber Executive Order framework and repeatable process for future model releases,” the company said.

OpenAI describes the three GPT-5.6 models as follows: Sol is the flagship model that is the company’s strongest model yet in terms of agentic capabilities in coding, biology and cybersecurity; Terra is a balanced model for everyday work that performs similarly to GPT-5.5 at half the cost; and Luna is a fast and affordable model that that brings strong capability at the lowest cost offered by the company.

It was reported June 5 that OpenAI’s head of countries, George Osborne, said OpenAI would allow the U.S. government to assess the capabilities of its AI models before the company releases them.

Osborne said the company would comply with the executive order signed June 2 by President Donald Trump, which created a voluntary process for AI companies to provide access to their models.

“It’s quite right that democratic governments have a big role to play in how this technology is used and deployed,” Osborne said.

Rival AI startup Anthropic disabled access to its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models on June 12 in response to a U.S. government export control directive that cited “national security authorities” and called on the company to suspend access to those models by “any foreign national.”

“Our understanding is that the government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’ Fable 5,” Anthropic said at the time.

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