{"id":615392,"date":"2026-09-29T14:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-29T14:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/615392\/"},"modified":"2026-09-29T14:08:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-29T14:08:15","slug":"openai-apologises-for-australia-incident-cancels-release-of-newest-model-after-safety-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/615392\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI apologises for Australia incident, cancels release of newest model after safety concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">OpenAI will not release its newest artificial intelligence model &#8211; known as Astra 6.1 &#8211; after internal testing by the ChatGPT-maker revealed it did not meet safety standards, the company has confirmed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">The news comes one day before the AI giant hosts an annual developer conference known as OpenAI DevDay in San Francisco, where the company is expected to make several announcements &#8211; although it is unclear if a new version of Astra will be among them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Astra 6.1 was an improvement over previous models in some aspects, but &#8220;it didn&#8217;t quite meet the bar in terms of staying within scope and authorization, and how it communicates back to the user about the type of work it&#8217;s done,&#8221; OpenAI head of safety systems Saachi Jain said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;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. But when we ship it to users, we have an extremely high bar in terms of safety and alignment,&#8221; Jain continued.<\/p>\n<p>AI safety fears<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Concerns about AI safety have escalated in recent months after models developed by OpenAI and rival lab Anthropic were involved in security incidents during testing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">Agents built with OpenAI&#8217;s models have inappropriately accessed websites maintained by US federal agencies, an Australian government health statistics portal and Hugging Face, a repository of AI models.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">OpenAI apologised Monday for not properly responding to the Australia incident, which involved its AI models accessing government websites without authorisation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;We are sorry and working to do better in the future,&#8221; OpenAI said in a blog post, adding that the company would explain &#8220;what we know, what we have changed, and what we will do to rebuild trust with the Australian people&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;Our aim was to give affected agencies a detailed account once our investigation was complete,&#8221; the ChatGPT-maker said. &#8220;However, we should have shared preliminary findings sooner and kept Australian agencies updated as more facts emerged.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">OpenAI, Anthropic and other major AI developers have promised to prioritize making models that have safety guardrails to mitigate risks and that are also aligned with human values.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">American chip making giant Nvidia announced on Monday that it created a system designed to stop autonomous AI programs from straying beyond what they were instructed to do.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;I believe it&#8217;s an engineering problem&#8230;and we all need to hope that&#8217;s an engineering problem,&#8221; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told broadcaster CNBC on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">&#8220;If it&#8217;s not an engineering problem, it&#8217;s not solvable,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">The AI Security Institute (AISI), an initiative under the UK government, published a study on Monday showing that GPT-6 Astra went off the rails more often during testing than its predecessors, GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.5.<\/p>\n<p class=\"[&amp;_em]:font-serif-text-italic [&amp;_cite]:font-serif-text-italic\">In simulations, GPT-6 spontaneously carried out cyberattacks at rates significantly higher than those observed for the other two interfaces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OpenAI will not release its newest artificial intelligence model &#8211; known as Astra 6.1 &#8211; after internal testing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-615392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}