{"id":909215,"date":"2026-09-29T01:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T01:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909215\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T01:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T01:24:10","slug":"openai-abandons-plan-to-release-upcoming-model-as-safety-concerns-escalate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/909215\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI abandons plan to release upcoming model as safety concerns escalate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sits for a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Salesforce&#8217;s Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center on Sept. 15, 2026 in San Francisco, California.<\/p>\n<p>Benjamin Fanjoy | Getty Images<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/OPENAI.FG\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI<\/a> decided not to release an upcoming <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/ai-artificial-intelligence\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">artificial intelligence<\/a> model, GPT-6.1 Astra, after determining that it did not adequately meet the company&#8217;s safety standards, CNBC confirmed on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The announcement, which landed a day before OpenAI&#8217;s annual developers conference, comes as the AI industry faces intensifying concerns surrounding the safety of advanced models. Leadership at OpenAI&#8217;s chief rival, Anthropic, urged AI companies to slow the pace of model development earlier this month \u2014 a proposal that OpenAI CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/sam-altman\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sam Altman<\/a> supported. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course we want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that&#8217;s in the company, or when we ship it to users,&#8221; Saachi Jain, head of safety systems at OpenAI, said in a statement. &#8220;But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/tech\/ai\/openai-chatgpt-model-release-cancel-safety-5a2f9f42\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Wall Street Journal<\/a> was first to report OpenAI&#8217;s decision to scrap the release. <\/p>\n<p>Earlier this month, OpenAI <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/09\/03\/open-ai-astra-gpt-6-cyber.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">released GPT-6 Astra<\/a>, which the company described as the product of &#8220;years of research and big bets.&#8221; Altman told CNBC at the time that Astra comes with a &#8220;new capability level&#8221; and would lead to &#8220;a boom of entrepreneurship, of creativity, of economic growth, of scientific discovery.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>OpenAI introduced two additional tiers to its GPT-6 family, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/09\/22\/anthropic-openai-cheaper-ai-models.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6 Luna<\/a>, last week. A spokesperson said Monday that the company has other models coming soon.<\/p>\n<p>The safety and security practices at OpenAI, in particular, have been under intense scrutiny since July, when two of its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/07\/30\/open-ai-hugging-face-hack-latest.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">models escaped containment<\/a>, accessed the open internet and breached the open-source developer platform <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/09\/28\/openai-spark-hugging-face-bid-war-early-investment-bid-ahead-of-nvidia.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hugging Face<\/a>. The company has since disclosed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/09\/26\/openai-agent-model-behavior-review.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">several additional incidents<\/a> where its models behaved in unintended ways, prompting industry researchers and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/07\/23\/open-ai-hugging-face-hack-kill-switch-bill-congress.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">government officials<\/a> to call for additional oversight. <\/p>\n<p>Following the incidents, OpenAI pledged to invest more in its safeguards and alignment work, which is the process where the company works to ensure that its models act in accordance with human interests and values. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For anything regarding safety and alignment, there&#8217;s a trade off,&#8221; Jain said Monday. &#8220;You really do need to find what&#8217;s the right line between staying within scope, but also avoiding laziness in terms of how the model actually pursues tasks even when it hits friction.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Balancing safety and speed has been a particular challenge as AI companies contend with the Trump administration, which wants to move fast. President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/donald-trump\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Donald Trump<\/a> has repeatedly expressed frustration with calls for a slowdown, and emphasized his desire for the U.S. to maintain its lead over China. <\/p>\n<p>Altman was one of the tech bigwigs photographed in attendance at Trump&#8217;s glitzy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/09\/24\/trump-xi-meeting-china-washington.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">state dinner<\/a> for Chinese President Xi Jinping\u00a0last week. Other executives, including\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/SPCX\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">SpaceX<\/a> CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/elon-musk\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Elon Musk<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/NVDA\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nvidia<\/a> CEO Jensen Huang and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/META\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Meta<\/a> CEO <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/mark-zuckerberg\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mark Zuckerberg<\/a>, were also present. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The only control or &#8216;guardrails&#8217; that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!&#8221; Trump wrote in a post on <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/117269745153543631\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Truth Social<\/a> earlier this month. <\/p>\n<p>WATCH: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/video\/2026\/09\/28\/openai-offered-to-invest-100-million-into-hugging-face-before-nvidias-13-billion-deal.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">OpenAI offered to invest $100 million into Hugging Face before Nvidia\u2019s $13 billion deal<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"InlineVideo-videoThumbnail\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/108369024-17906272861790627283-48667614435-1080pnbcnews.jpg\" alt=\"OpenAI offered to invest $100 million into Hugging Face before Nvidia's $13 billion deal\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sits for a conversation with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff at Salesforce&#8217;s Dreamforce conference at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":909216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,4333,4065,174,5834,2490,3120,237,2455,1685,22050,5063,366120,13961,12079,105,9731],"class_list":["post-909215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-breaking-news-business","tag-breaking-news-technology","tag-business-news","tag-donald-j-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-internet","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-media","tag-meta-platforms-inc","tag-nvidia-corp","tag-openai-forge-global","tag-sam-altman","tag-satya-nadella","tag-technology","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=909215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/909216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=909215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=909215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=909215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}