Artificial intelligence company OpenAI will roll out the latest version of ChatGPT to users worldwide on Thursday after the Trump administration reportedly lifted its restrictions on the chatbot.
In a social media post late Tuesday, OpenAI said it is “expanding preview access globally” to ChatGPT-5.6 Sol and lower-tier models Terra and Luna ahead of the Thursday release.
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The announcement came a month after the administration pushed the AI firm to pause the wide release of its newest model. The request was in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order clarifying how AI giants should grant the federal government early access to their most advanced models before they’re released to the general public. The order calls for a 30-day review process over cybersecurity concerns.
The system created under the executive order is voluntary, not mandatory.
OpenAI previously said the staggered rollout was “not its preferred way” to release new AI models, but it ultimately consented to temporary federal oversight.
The Commerce Department tested ChatGPT-5.6 Sol while OpenAI officials answered questions during the testing period, according to Axios.
Anthropic was put in a similar situation, having been placed under export controls by the Trump administration last month. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick later lifted the restrictions. Anthropic users were able to access Claude Mythos 5 and Fable 5 again on July 1 after their initial release last month.
The global block on Anthropic’s models was imposed over national security concerns that Mythos’s internal safeguards could be bypassed, enabling the model to be used as a cyberweapon. In response, the company took the AI systems offline worldwide and limited foreign nationals’ access to them.
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Regarding OpenAI’s models, Sol is considered the firm’s most powerful flagship model for advanced reasoning. By contrast, Terra and Luna are less advanced yet more affordable for customers.
Shortly after OpenAI’s announcement, tech mogul Elon Musk revealed that the newly merged SpaceXAI will release Grok 4.5 to the public on Thursday. The new model has undergone beta testing at SpaceX and Tesla since last month.
