There seems to be some confusion around who has the authority to approve the release of new AI models in the United States. OpenAI announced in an X post on Tuesday night that its latest model, GPT-5.6—which comes in three tiers: Sol, Terra, and Luna—will be publicly available starting tomorrow, July 09. The model was first introduced last month, with OpenAI announcing in a blog post that it would initially be rolled out solely to a small group of government-approved partners. Previously, company CEO Sam Altman had reportedly told employees in an internal memo that the government would be granting access to the model on a “customer by customer” basis. Axios reported this morning, citing an anonymous source, that the decision to make Sol, Terra, and Luna publicly available followed a “green light” from the Trump administration. OpenAI has been collaborating with the Department of Commerce’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation to test the new model for potential national security risks, and the company has sent technical experts to Washington DC, where they’ll remain to continue working with federal officials, the outlet said. The implication from the Axios report is that OpenAI required some kind of official permission before it could proceed with the public release of GPT-5.6. If that’s in fact the case, then it seems to contradict the Trump administration’s own (at least public) directive on how AI models can be deployed in the U.S.