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OpenAI said its upcoming AI model Astra has shown major advances in agentic coding and cybersecurity, with preliminary tests indicating it could potentially reach the “Critical” cybersecurity threshold under its Preparedness Framework. The company is strengthening safeguards, monitoring and testing while restricting access and enhancing security measures for higher-capability models.

New Delhi: OpenAI on Friday said its upcoming artificial intelligence model, Astra, has demonstrated significant advances in agentic coding and cybersecurity, prompting the company to conclude that it cannot currently rule out the model reaching the "Critical" cybersecurity capability threshold under its Preparedness Framework.

The company said its latest internal evaluations, conducted over the past few days along with assessments by experts, showed a notable improvement in the model's ability to perform cybersecurity-related tasks. OpenAI said it was sharing the findings to maintain transparency with the public, governments and the broader AI safety and security community.

Under OpenAI's Preparedness Framework, a model reaches the Critical cybersecurity threshold if it can identify and develop functional zero-day exploits across severity levels in multiple hardened, real-world critical systems without human intervention. The threshold also includes the ability to develop and execute novel, end-to-end cyberattack strategies against hardened targets based only on a high-level objective.

OpenAI clarified that Astra is an upcoming model and was not involved in the exploitation of Hugging Face. The company added that its preliminary evaluations are still ongoing, but performance has been sufficiently strong that Critical-level capability cannot be ruled out at this stage.