OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Apologizes Following Confusion Over GPT-6 Astra Rollout

Availability is being phased in starting with select corporate customers, with plans to expand to Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise users. However, the staged release has led to ambiguity regarding priority, sparking frustration particularly among users of the high-cost Pro plan.

CEO Sam Altman acknowledged in a post on X that the rollout has been "messy" and offered an apology. He stated that the company is working to provide access as quickly as possible. No specific schedule has been provided at this time. While he mentioned aiming to start provision by the weekend, he avoided making a firm promise.

Technical issues have also emerged. In addition to delays in the delivery of blog posts, the inference process of Astra has faced criticism from a safety perspective, as it is reportedly more difficult to monitor than other models. OpenAI stated that it delayed the release by several weeks to strengthen safety features following a previous hacking incident.

To alleviate concerns, Engineering Lead Thibault Sottiaux announced that paid plan users who cannot access Astra will be granted one usage limit reset per day for the duration of the outage.