OpenAI yesterday:
We’re beginning a limited preview of the GPT‑5.6 series: Sol, our
flagship model; Terra, a balanced model for everyday work; and
Luna, a fast and affordable model. Terra has competitive
performance to GPT‑5.5 while being 2× cheaper and Luna brings
strong capability at our lowest cost.GPT‑5.6 Sol launches with our most robust safety stack to date. We
strengthened protections for higher-risk activity, sensitive cyber
requests, and repeated misuse, and spent multiple weeks finding
weaknesses, pressure-testing our system, and hardening it against
real-world attacks.We believe in broad access, and we plan to make GPT‑5.6 Sol,
Terra, and Luna generally available in the coming weeks. As part
of our ongoing engagement with the U.S. government, we previewed
our plans and the models’ capabilities ahead of today’s launch. At
their request, we are starting with a limited preview for a small
group of trusted partners whose participation has been shared with
the government, before releasing more broadly.
Stephanie Palazzolo, reporting for The Information (and posted to X) regarding an internal Q&A hosted by CEO Sam Altman:
The reason for the staggered release, Altman explained: The
federal government asked it to do so. Altman said that this was
the best path for widely releasing the model as soon as possible,
said one of the people. In a Thursday memo, Altman told staff that
the government would be “approving access customer by customer
during this preview period” for GPT 5.6. He added that he hoped
there would be a more general release a “couple of weeks later” if
all went well. […]Even so, after OpenAI had shared its plans for the limited release
with top government officials earlier this week, Altman still
received a call from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick cautioning
the company against launching without receiving approvals from
other agencies, according to a person familiar with the call.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe that the U.S. government should have regulatory approval over frontier AI models. It’s absurd to think this should be run by an apparatchik with zero AI expertise like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
AI regulation should be thoughtful, measured, consistent, objective, and deeply informed. It should not be impulsive, impetuous, petty, uninformed, subjective, inconsistent, and transactional. The latter, however, is what we’re getting.
