Is it just “fear-based marketing”?
The new results for GPT-5.5 suggest that, when it comes to cybersecurity risk, Mythos Preview was likely not “a breakthrough specific to one model” but rather “a byproduct of more general improvements in long-horizon autonomy, reasoning, and coding,” AISI writes.
In a recent interview with the Core Memory podcast, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman criticized what he calls “fear-based marketing” in promoting limited releases for certain AI models. While he said he’s “sure Mythos is a great model for cybersecurity,” he added that “it is clearly incredible marketing to say, ‘We have built a bomb. We are about to drop it on your head. We will sell you a bomb shelter for $100 million.’”
“There will be a lot more rhetoric about models that are too dangerous to release,” Altman continued. “There will also be very dangerous models that will have to be released in different ways.”
In February, OpenAI rolled out its Trusted Access for Cyber pilot program, letting security researchers and enterprises verify their identities and register their interest in studying OpenAI’s frontier models for “legitimate defensive work.” Last month, OpenAI said it was using that trusted access list to control the limited launch of GPT-5.4-Cyber, a model variant that it says is “purposely fine-tuned for additional cyber capabilities and with fewer capability restrictions.”
On Thursday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on social media that the initial release of GPT-5.5-Cyber would similarly be limited “to critical cyber defenders in the next few days.”