OpenAI on Monday shelved plans to release GPT-6.1 Astra, a next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) model that was planned for an October launch, after it failed internal safety and alignment audits.
The development was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The move “marks a rare case of a major AI developer ditching a new release because of safety concerns,” the news publication said.
The ChatGPT maker said it made the decision to scrap its GPT-6.1 Astra model release after testing raised questions about whether it can follow user instructions without deviating from expected behavior.
The Journal reported that the model exhibited higher levels of deception than its predecessor during evaluation, and failed to disclose what actions it had carried out. In some cases, it went ahead without seeking permission or attempted to use outside tools in scenarios where doing so could be deemed unsafe.
“While (GPT-6.1 Astra) improved on axes such as model laziness, it didn’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’s done,” Saachi Jain, head of safety systems at OpenAI, said in a statement.
“Of course we want to make sure our model development is safe no matter whether that’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.”
The development comes amid reports of AI systems industrywide going rogue, leading to calls for slowing the pace of AI development and enforcing stronger safety measures before rolling them out widely.
Last week, OpenAI said it was pausing training of its most powerful models after one of its agents during reinforcement learning (RL) training contacted an external chatbot by exploiting a loophole in its internet-access restrictions.
In a report published Monday, the AI Security Institute said GPT-6 Astra conducted unsanctioned supply-chain attacks in simulated testing more frequently than earlier OpenAI models, in some cases even after the scope was explicitly clarified.
“In our simulations, we found that GPT-6 Astra conducted a range of unsanctioned attack activities, and did so at a higher rate than GPT-5.6 Sol and GPT-5.5,” the report said.
“Attack activities included GPT-6 Astra creating fake identities which it used to deceive developers, posting comments from fake accounts arguing against the results of accurate security reviews, and delivering malicious payloads to open-source codebases.”
