A person familiar with the matter confirmed to Axios that the U.S. Department of Commerce has approved OpenAI to widely release its advanced GPT 5.6 model. OpenAI expects to widely release GPT 5.6 this week after completing additional testing and meetings between the company and government officials.
The testing was conducted by the AI Standards and Innovation Center under the Department of Commerce, with OpenAI sending technical experts to stay in Washington to answer any potential questions, according to sources.Last month, OpenAI was only permitted to release GPT 5.6 in phases to government-approved entities, a move mirroring the release restrictions on Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models. OpenAI stated at the time that phased releases were not its preferred method.[PANews]