OpenAI’s ChatGPT-5.6 model was rolled out to a small group upon request from the White House, the Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of the National Cyber Director, despite complaints from CEO Sam Altman that this wasn’t how the company prefers to release its products.
Executives at OpenAI said they hoped a pending executive order designed to evaluate the most advanced AI models would soon establish a process for making these kinds of decisions and quell the Trump administration’s reactive and unpredictable policymaking — a sentiment echoed around the industry.
In an X post Tuesday night, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles sought to reassure people that the administration remained focused on a June 2 executive order by Trump that emphasized voluntary federal reviews of AI models. “Our shared priority remains: get the best tech deployed as quickly and safely as possible,” she wrote.
But tech lobbyists and industry advocates remain unsettled by the ad hoc and opaque nature of the government’s restrictions on Anthropic and OpenAI’s most advanced models.
“It is a positive development that Commerce has lifted the export controls on Mythos and Fable, but there remains a real need for a consistent process and framework for frontier model assessment,” said Paul Lekas, head of global public policy and government affairs at the Software & Information Industry Association, a trade group whose members include Anthropic and Google.
Dean Ball, a former AI adviser in the Trump White House and the incoming head of strategic futures at OpenAI, noted in a social media post that the White House’s reversal on the Anthropic controls only raises more questions.
“We have no idea what Anthropic did to make the models ‘safe,’ what commitments Anthropic has made going forward, and whether or how any of this applies to other frontier models in the government’s licensing queue,” said Ball, referring to the White House’s ongoing hold on OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 model.
An OpenAI spokesperson did not immediately respond when asked to comment on the lifting of the Anthropic restrictions and whether the company had received any word from the White House about when it would allow GPT 5.6 to move forward.