The White House asked OpenAI to limit GPT-5.6 to a small set of government-approved partners before any wider release, with the administration approving access "customer by customer" during the preview period, Sam Altman told OpenAI staff in a Wednesday Q&A reported by The Information. The request came from the Office of the National Cyber Director and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, with Altman discussing GPT-5.6 with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick the same day. Altman said in a Thursday memo that a broader release could come a couple of weeks later if the staged rollout goes well, and that the staged approach is not OpenAI's preferred long-term arrangement. An administration source told Axios the intervention reflects the model's frontier-class capability rather than a heavier overall hand from the White House.
Read at The Information ↗ • Read at Axios ↗
The House Science, Space and Technology Committee approved 10 AI related measures in one full-committee markup Thursday morning in Rayburn Room 2318. The package includes the CREATE AI Act (HR.2385, Obernolte), the AI Security and Innovation Act (HR.9363, Obernolte), and the AI Flaw Reporting and Security Enhancement Act (HR.9333, Ross). During consideration of HR.9363, Rep. George Whitesides (D-Calif.) offered an amendment expanding CAISI's national security evaluations to cover AI systems conducting their own autonomous research and development, which he framed as the approaching "horizon of recursive self-improvement." Obernolte backed the amendment, agreeing that recursive self-improvement and the loss of control it could cause rank among the catastrophic risks CAISI should study. Also advanced: the Workforce for AI Trust Act (HR.9334, Lofgren) and the NSF AI Education Act (HR.5351, Fong).
Read at Congress.gov ↗ • Read at Bloomberg Law ↗ • Read at House Science YouTube ↗
The Pentagon quietly revised its joint targeting doctrine in April, replacing the longstanding human-in-the-loop model in which a person initiates lethal action with a stance envisioning "systems where AI initiates actions with human monitoring," per a Bloomberg document review. The revised publication was approved without public disclosure and, while unclassified, is not released publicly. A new chapter on the future of targeting argues that the speed of future warfare and adversary advances in AI may require the joint force to adopt completely autonomous systems. The Defense Department has not announced the change.
Read at Bloomberg ↗ • Read at NDTV ↗
Rep. Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas) introduced the AI Incident Reporting Act on Thursday, which would require developers of frontier AI models designated by Commerce to report dangerous capabilities, security breaches and safety incidents to the Secretary of Commerce within seven days of discovery, per Reuters. Commerce would then have 48 hours to notify congressional leadership and relevant committee chairs of the most serious incidents. Commerce would set the reporting thresholds in consultation with AI developers and other experts, per a press release from Moran's office. The bill arrives 13 days after Commerce's June 12 directive forced Anthropic to disable Mythos 5 and Fable 5 worldwide, which Moran cited as evidence of the absence of a transparent framework governing frontier AI.
Read at Reuters ↗ • Read at PYMNTS ↗
The Economist's June 25 essay argues that bipartisan fear of AI has emerged as one of the few unifying issues in U.S. politics, spanning left concerns about labor displacement and right concerns about child safety, data center sprawl and frontier risk. AP reporting documents the state-level evidence: state lawmakers are advancing more targeted bills on chatbot interactions with minors, employer AI use and AI caused catastrophic risk. The bills come six months after Trump's executive order directed the attorney general to challenge state laws deemed more than "minimally burdensome." The order also tasked Commerce with drawing up a list of problematic state regulations that the federal task force could target. Governors had vetoed broader frameworks earlier this year citing industry burden, prompting legislators to return with narrower, harm-specific bills.
Read at Economist ↗