The US Government Will Approve GPT-5.6 Access Customer by Customer
The Trump administration asked OpenAI to stagger GPT-5.6's rollout over security concerns, and Sam Altman told staff the government will vet access one customer at a time — a first for a commercial frontier model.
OpenAI has agreed to a staggered, government-supervised rollout of GPT-5.6, with the Trump administration approving access to the model customer by customer, according to reporting surfaced by @steph_palazzolo, who broke the story with colleagues Leo Schwartz and Amir Efrati. On Thursday, CEO Sam Altman reportedly told staff that the government would be vetting individual customers — an arrangement Palazzolo described as "a highly unusual approach." It is, by any measure, a departure from how commercial software has ever been distributed.
The contours of the deal were corroborated by @AndrewCurran_, who reported that the government had requested the slow rollout and that OpenAI agreed. "During this phase the government will approve each user individually," Curran wrote, adding a prediction that should give the entire industry pause: "This will probably be the norm for all frontier models from all labs from now on."
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