Sam Altman · Anthropic · OpenAI · Mythos · Donald Trump · GPT · Tom's Hardware
OpenAI's ChatGPT-5.6 gets the same banhammer treatment as Anthropic’s Mythos from the federal government
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a staff Q&A meeting that its latest model, GPT-5.6, is available in limited preview to only a small group of customers handpicked by the U.S. government.
Key facts
- It eventually built Fable 5, a watered-down version of Mythos with built-in safeguards to prevent misuse, and released it in June 2026
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during a staff Q&A meeting that its latest model, GPT-5.6, is available in limited preview to only a small group of customers handpicked by the U.S. government — It is horrible for the broader AI ecosystem,” Head of AI Policy and think tank Abundance Institute and former FTC Chief Technologist Neil Chilson said in their blog
- While Altman did not mention how long the delay for the general release of GPT-5.6 will be, he said in a memo that he hoped it would happen in a couple of weeks
Summary
Despite OpenAI’s agreement to the delay, sources say that Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Altman to warn him against releasing GPT-5.6 to the public without prior approval from government agencies. This wasn’t the first time that an American AI lab has delayed the release of its frontier model due to security concerns. It eventually built Fable 5, a watered-down version of Mythos with built-in safeguards to prevent misuse, and released it in June 2026. The increasing advancement of AI models has the White House scrambling to prevent them from falling into the wrong hands. However, this move has got some industry experts concerned.