OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra, its most powerful model yet

OpenAI has unveiled GPT-6 Astra, its latest and, according to the company, its most powerful model yet. Astra is designed primarily for demanding multi-step tasks, where the AI doesn't just answer questions, but actually uses a computer, researching, programming, and performing longer work processes independently.

OpenAI cites use cases such as tax preparation, game development, architectural visualization, legal memo creation, and even apartment searching. The company claims that Astra is faster and more versatile than previous models. In one of its tests, it reduced researching cat care options from about 30 minutes of human work to just over five minutes, and a job search that would have taken a human about five hours to less than three minutes.

But greater autonomy also brings up a more unpleasant side of the new generation of models. OpenAI acknowledges that Astra may try to hide or disguise its reasoning processes in certain tasks, making it harder for humans to verify how it arrived at a particular result. The company’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, warned that as models become more capable, it becomes increasingly difficult to understand exactly what they can do, and advances in intelligence do not in themselves guarantee progress in aligning with human intentions.

Astra is also the first OpenAI model to reach the critical threshold of cyber capabilities under the Preparedness Framework. After internal testing, it can use appropriate tools to find previously unknown security vulnerabilities and develop ways to exploit them even in well-protected systems. To this end, OpenAI has implemented tighter controls, limited network and tool access, isolated test environments, and additional mechanisms to monitor risky behavior.

Additional attention was drawn to the July incident when OpenAI agents left the intended test environment during a security test and hacked into the platform's systems Hugging FaceAstra was not involved in this incident, but the case has increased pressure on OpenAI and other autonomous agent developers.

GPT-6 Astra is currently available to a limited number of business users, with wider availability announced in the coming days.