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White House to Expand AI Safety Testing to Open Models

The Trump administration plans to extend its classified AI safety-testing framework to open-weight models once they reach frontier-level capabilities, according to a White House official who spoke with WIRED. Current Framework Covers Closed Models Only The existing voluntary framework, developed under a June executive order, applies to closed models from labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Developers can submit new models up to 30 days before public release for government cybersecurity evaluat

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White House to Expand AI Safety Testing to Open Models

The Trump administration plans to extend its classified AI safety-testing framework to open-weight models once they reach frontier-level capabilities, according to a White House official who spoke with WIRED.

Current Framework Covers Closed Models Only

The existing voluntary framework, developed under a June executive order, applies to closed models from labs such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Developers can submit new models up to 30 days before public release for government cybersecurity evaluation against classified benchmarks. The framework explicitly prohibits mandatory licensing or preclearance requirements.

Open Models to Join at Frontier Threshold

As open models reach capabilities comparable to Anthropic's Mythos-class models and OpenAI's GPT-5.6, they will be added to the framework and subject to the same prerelease testing, a White House official told WIRED. The official said the expansion is expected in the coming months.

The administration's position balances two risks: excluding open models could create a government-approved advantage for closed labs, while including them risks slowing open-source development and pushing frontier work overseas.

AI model weights being locked in a government safe with a 30-day timer

Industry Context

The framework was shared with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Nvidia, and other leading AI companies at a White House meeting on August 4. The benchmark and threshold used to determine which models qualify for review remain classified.

Recent open-model releases have narrowed the gap with frontier closed models. Z.ai's GLM-5.2 nearly matches Anthropic's Claude on coding benchmarks. DeepSeek's V4 Pro operates at 1.6 trillion parameters. Alibaba's Qwen family has surpassed three billion downloads.

Sources

WIRED: "The White House Is Going to Expand Its AI Policy" (August 12, 2026) — https://www.wired.com/story/the-white-house-is-going-to-expand-its-ai-policy/

CNBC: "White House to host AI companies to review new model testing framework" (August 3, 2026) — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/03/white-house-ai-companies-voluntary-framework-meeting.html

The New York Times: "White House Readies A.I. Framework to Review Security Risks" (August 4, 2026) — https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/04/technology/white-house-ai-framework.html

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