The Trump administration has asked OpenAI to slow down the rollout of its next AI model, according to multiple outlets including Mashable, Semafor, and Quartz (qz.com).
NDTV reports that the request specifically targets a model identified as GPT-5.6. According to MSN, citing reporting carried on Bing News, the U.S. government has asked OpenAI to keep the new GPT-5.6 model available only to government-approved partners before any wider public launch, with officials pointing to security concerns as the reason.
Quartz frames the move as a request to "stagger" the release rather than an outright block — meaning the model would reach a limited, vetted set of users first instead of launching broadly all at once. Ubergizmo described the situation as the government putting GPT-5.6 "under lock and key," while MIT Technology Review characterized the restrictions as "unprecedented."
The request does not appear to be an isolated case. According to the MSN report, the action follows the administration forcing AI rival Anthropic to pull its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models offline weeks earlier. Taken together, the two episodes suggest a broader pattern of the federal government intervening directly in when and how leading AI labs can ship their most advanced systems.
The outlets covering the story — among them Mashable, Yahoo, Semafor, NDTV, Ubergizmo, and MIT Technology Review — generally agree on the core facts: the White House wants tighter control over the launch of OpenAI's newest model, with access initially funneled through government-approved channels.
Why it matters: If the government can decide who gets early access to the most capable AI models, it marks a significant shift in power over a technology that has so far been released largely on the companies' own terms.