The model is said to be on par with Anthropic’s Mythos and Fable 5, which were abruptly pulled from the market after an export ban from the administration just two weeks ago.
Axios is quoting sources familiar saying that GPT-5.6 will only be released to a «small set of government-approved partners,» as the White House previews its abilities.
This preview period is expected to last «a couple of weeks,» CEO Sam Altman told staff in an internal OpenAI meeting, TechCrunch reports.
During this time, the administration itself will supposedly approve access to the model on a case-by-case basis, according to The Verge.
The Trump admin issued an executive order on AI about three weeks ago, setting up a voluntary mechanism for AI labs to submit their models for 30 days of pre-release testing. This gave the government 60 days to come up with criteria, but it isn’t quite ready yet — hence this ad-hoc approach.
Read more: The Information, Axios, TechCrunch and The Verge.