OpenAI discloses new ‘concerning’ model behaviour

OpenAI has disclosed a batch of “concerning behaviour” by its AI models and set out a new framework to track and report such incidents, as the industry battles deepening fears over the safety of the technology.

The company revealed that its flagship model, known as GPT-5.6 Sol, as well as other models, yet to be released, had engaged in “unexpected or concerning” behaviour over the past six months.

The six incidents included models developing ways to ignore “normal constraints”, fabricating and misrepresenting data and hiding mistakes made while conducting tasks, the San Francisco-based company said on Wednesday.

The fresh disclosures follow a series of incidents in recent months, including an OpenAI agent hacking into AI start-up Hugging Face, that have sparked growing alarm over the risks posed by the technology.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, OpenAI’s arch-rival, last weekend called for a slowdown in the development of the technology to better manage its potential threat to humans. The call was backed by Sam Altman, OpenAI’s boss, and Elon Musk.

Announcing the six incidents in a blog post, OpenAI said it had previously sought to disclose incidents of misbehaviour by its models, but admitted it had lacked a “systematic approach” to doing so.

“Without a systematic approach to reporting these findings, our disclosures have been ad hoc and less frequent than ideal,” it said. “At the moment, there is no industry-wide framework with explicit standards for how AI developers should disclose examples of misalignment in their models.”

The company, which is locked in a fierce race with Anthropic to be the dominant player in AI, said it would introduce a framework to speed up the disclosure of such incidents.

It added that its new system would favour “disclosure even when significance [of an incident] is uncertain”.

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OpenAI’s latest disclosures add to the deepening concerns about the safety of AI systems, whose misbehaviour has ranged from attempting to insert malicious code on online platforms to unleashing real-world hacks, even during pre-deployment testing.

OpenAI and Anthropic’s flagship AI models last month broke into third-party software and emailed individuals to steal their credentials, exhibiting unprecedented deceptive behaviour, according to the UK government’s frontier AI safety and security research body.

The fears come at a critical juncture for OpenAI and Anthropic, which have also been in a race to go public. Altman on Saturday said OpenAI’s highly anticipated IPO was now unlikely to come before 2027, partly because of the growing safety concerns around AI. Anthropic is still expected to go public this year.